


Star Wars: Equilibrium - Part I: Disharmony

by MissMaritime



Series: Star Wars: Equilibrium [1]
Category: Star Wars, Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Complex Relationship, Control, Disability, F/M, Temptation, Torture, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-24
Updated: 2017-10-05
Packaged: 2018-08-24 08:14:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 25
Words: 50,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8364664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissMaritime/pseuds/MissMaritime
Summary: Following the destruction of Starkiller Base and the evacuation of the Resistance base on Ileenium, the First Order searches for their enemies across an unstable galaxy. Kylo Ren has recovered from the physical injuries he received from Rey, and continues his mission to root out and eliminate the last of the Jedi. The fractious governments of the New Republic are incapable of uniting in the aftermath of the destruction of the Hosnian system, allowing the First Order free reign to hunt down and destroy those who stand in their way. Amid this political turmoil, there are those who take advantage of the confusion to pursue their own interests.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first attempt at Star Wars fanfic, but I have done my best to keep it fairly canonically consistent and up to date. As such, there will be references to things happening in the official Star Wars novels, and the television series', as well as the films.
> 
> Disclaimer:  
> Star Wars, all names of Star Wars characters, vehicles and any other Star Wars related items are registered trademarks and/or copyrights of Lucasfilm Ltd., or their respective trademark and copyright holders. All original characters and plots are my own work.

### Prologue

Flying among the planets that made up First Order space, the Star Destroyer Finalizer was an imposing vessel. It bristled with weaponry, a floating city built for inspiring terror and imposing violence. On the bridge, a console lit up, streams of text flowing across the screen. The officer on duty, young and eager to prove herself, felt a burst of exhilaration at what she was reading. This was great news, important news, the kind of news that mobilized starships and sent entire fleets halfway across the galaxy. The kind of news one didn’t need to be afraid to deliver. Lt. Amata stood, straightening her uniform with a brisk tug, and informed her superior of her intention before she set off in search of the intel’s true recipient. Another officer was at her station before she reached the door.  


The ship was massive, on the impressive scale preferred by the First Order. Even at such a late hour it buzzed with activity, with officers manning terminals or overseeing operations, while troopers drilled and patrolled the vessel. As there was no true day on a ship, only a regulated cycle with alternating shifts, it didn’t really matter what the time was. Even so, she retained a sense of a day/night cycle, remnant of a lifetime spent planetside, and according to that cycle it was night. Everyone maintained an attitude of disciplined readiness, but it was miles from the overbearing adrenaline-fueled rush of action. A rush they might all be feeling very soon. She passed a double column of Stormtroopers heading in the opposite direction, watching the overhead lights glint on twin rows of perfectly white armour as she stepped into the lift.  


The officers quarters were close to the bridge for obvious reasons. Bypassing the majority of the high ranking officers’ rooms, Amata turned down the narrow corridor that branched from the main hallway. Everyone knew not to come this way unless it was absolutely necessary and most were perfectly happy to follow the unwritten rule. Despite the fact that she came bearing good news, she couldn’t help but feel increasingly nervous as she approached the door at the end of the hall. The man behind it was at best temperamental, and at worst, well, there was a reason they’d starting drawing lots when the news to be delivered was bad. She’d been lucky enough not to be on the receiving end herself, but even coming with good news was no guarantee he wouldn’t unleash his famous temper on her for disturbing him, particularly so late in the ‘day’.  


Thrusting her chin high, the lieutenant reached a hand out to the door control. Before she made contact the door slid open, revealing the hulking, black-cloaked figure of Kylo Ren. It was as if he’d known she was there. Having heard the second-hand reports of his power, it wouldn’t have surprised her if he had. Careful to look into the slitted eyes of the chrome-edged mask - replacement to the one lost on Starkiller Base - and not to give in to temptation and peek around him to see the darkly lit room behind, she steeled her spine and presented herself with confidence. He tended to respond better to confidence.  


He stood silent, waiting for her to speak, but he wouldn’t wait long. Amata was pleased to hear the controlled sound of her own voice, not giving away either her fear or her excitement, as she reported, “We’ve received an intelligence report from the Core, my lord.”  


The mask distorted his voice, making it deeper and sounding more aggressive than anyone else she knew. His reply was a simple, impatient, “And?”  


“There’s been a sighting.”


	2. The Dig

### The Dig

###  Norah

Five years. That was how long Norah Voss had spent borrowing money she’d never repay, travelling from world to world, fighting where necessary, hunting down and digging through ancient databases looking for kernels of forgotten data, and now digging an entire building complex out of the valley floor of a minuscule planet orbiting a tiny sun. All this because - if she was right - once, long ago, this had been a Jedi temple.  


Harsh light from the red dwarf known as Alsimer turned everything shades of crimson. The vegetation on this world was uniformly black to Norah’s human eyes, varying only in shape and size. The valley lay caught between the extremes of black and red, in the shadow of the aptly named Shrinking Mountains. Harsh winter rains washed down the mountainsides to drown the valley every year, carrying layers of sediment and leaving them behind as the waters receded in the late spring. Over the centuries these layers had slowly buried the temple, until only the peaks of the buildings remained aboveground, while the mountains had steadily grown smaller. When she’d arrived on this world there had been no clue as to the precise location of the ruins. It was only fate, or possibly an act of the Force, that led her to her guide, Ochada. The six-armed local who’d grown up close enough to play among the buried spires - only recently arrived in the capital city, Hameria, himself -happened to see her advertisement for a local guide with knowledge of ruins. Arjanaz had only one city large enough to merit an operational space port, and Hameria was clear on the far side of the planet from the ruins. Without their chance meeting, she doubted she’d have been able to locate the temple herself.  


Taking a moment to lift her goggles and wipe the sweat from her eyes, Norah surveyed the dig site. In less than a month, local standard, they had produced scans of the uppermost level of the temple, identified the central building, and entirely cleared its roof of nearly five and a half meters of soil. Because of the depth they’d had to dig a secondary section down to the half-way mark in order to bridge the gap between the surface and the roof of the building, creating an inverted L shape of the shaft. A few generations more and the temple would have been truly lost. With more funds she could have gone about the process differently, hiring professional excavators with actual equipment instead of locals with basic digging tools largely consisting of shovels, pickaxes, and anything else they could temporarily borrow from their farms since the planting season was long over. They could have built diversion canals or flood barriers to protect the area from the coming rains, giving themselves more time to work. They could have been slower, more methodical in the way they approached the dig, rather than the amateur, smash-and-grab method time constraints forced them into. Unfortunately, she’d barely been able to scrape together enough credits after Coruscant to fly out to the middle of nowhere, with just enough left over to pay Ochada’s friends and neighbours to spend the summer tearing up the ground without any finesse. It put a little money into the local economy and got her the help she needed, so it was good enough. It had to be.  


Intricate layers of stone formed a deceptively complex pattern on the roof, revealed to the sun for the first time in untold centuries. Arjanaz circled close enough to Alsimer that the years were short - barely a quarter of a Galactic Standard year, and the days weren’t much better. It was only a fluke of cosmic luck this planet had days at all. Most worlds circling red dwarfs were tidally locked.  


Even by Galactic time tables it had been ages since the temple was buried. It pained her to think of defacing the temple to gain access. When she’d first gleaned the possibility of a lost temple hidden in snippets recovered from damaged archives she’d imagined strolling in through the front door, like the ancient Jedi long ago. The reality of its location made that impossible. It would take years of digging, alterations to the basic structure of the valley, and an immense amount of money to make something like that work. She simply didn’t have the resources for it. The only option was to go down from the top, and that meant cutting into the roof.  


Ochada climbed down the ladder leading into the pit they’d dug, carrying a massive circular saw in four of his arms. His cousin, Forchada, fed the power cord down after him, connected to the generator that powered their lights and other equipment. At Ochada’s nod he began the climb down himself. The Arjaxi were all densely built, corded with muscle, heavily scaled, and extremely dexterous given their six arms. It made them especially well suited to excavating, even if they’d never done such a thing before. Today was the day they would see if that extended beyond digging and into creating openings in stone ceilings.  


“All right, everyone who is not about to start cutting needs to clear the pit!” Norah called out, gesturing from the diggers to the ladders on all four sides. “Bring all your equipment with you. We want to do this as safely as possible. No extraneous items around the cutting crew.”  


When the last of the diggers stood ringed around the edge of the pit, looking down at the cutters, Norah turned to the men beside her. They both towered over her, covered from head to foot in heavy construction gear, including face masks and thick gloves on each of their hands. For a brief moment she worried it wouldn’t be enough, that something would go wrong and someone would be injured. The idea of these men she’d begun to consider friends coming to harm over her obsession with the Jedi was painful.  


“You know how to handle that thing better than I do,” she began, nodding toward the saw. “I trust you to do what you need to to stay safe. We just need a point of entry - not to take the whole top off. You know where you’re cutting, it’s all marked off. But still, be careful. If there’s any trouble A4 will cut the power.”  


The little hoverdroid floated gently into view at the edge of the pit, ‘standing’ among the rest of the team.  


“It’s going to be fine. Relax. Get ready to celebrate your achievement,” Ochada said, facial appendages flattening in the Arjaxi equivalent of a grin. “We’re getting into this thing today.”  


A shiver of excitement ran up her spine at the pronouncement, but she didn’t want to get her hopes up too high. Things had a way of slipping sideways on her when she got ahead of herself, and she didn’t want this to be one of those times.  


“All right. Then let’s do this,” she said, gently tapping Ochada on the secondary shoulder - since the primary was too high.  


The climb out of the pit seemed to take a thousand times longer than usual. Norah’s hands trembled slightly, a side effect of the adrenaline surging through her body. When she got to the top several pairs of hands reached for her to help her out. Taking her place among the lot, she led by example, putting on her noise cancelling headset, face mask, and goggles. Automated color correction changed the scene instantly, artificially displaying everything as it would look under white light instead of red. It was much easier on human eyes, but disconcerting after even a few moments of observing the real thing. The gray, scaly skin of the Arjaxi suddenly appeared in an array of arbitrarily assigned colors. The plants were artificially recolored in shades of green, but the dirt retained its ruddy hue. Shaking her head and blinking away the discomfort at the color shift, Norah raised her hand and signalled to the men below to begin.  


Even through the earmuffs, the shriek of metal on stone was almost painfully loud. Several of the diggers added a second layer of ear protection by covering their headsets with their secondary appendages. One even added his tertiary hands as well. Sparks flew up from the roof, tossed in every direction by the saw. Ochada and Forchada worked quickly, making the first cut in just a few minutes. When they reached the end of the marked line, the guttural sound of the saw powering down was met with cheers. They lifted the blade out and immediately started on the second cut, carving out the first of two narrow strips of stone that would be used to feed cables under the main block. If the entire slab fell through it might collapse any floor that lay below, so they were working to lift it out instead. When the cuts were completed on the first strip the cutters powered off the saw entirely, disconnecting the power cable for safety. Hammers were handed down to them, and they began pounding on the section they’d cut out. It only took a few moments before the strip crashed down into the room below. Norah held her breath, waiting for something to go wrong, but the rest of the roof remained intact and level as hoped. Slowly breathing out, she signalled for them to continue.  


By the time the sun began to slip down to the horizon, a scant few hours since the day began, they had finished both small openings, threaded the heavy-duty cables through them and completed the final cuts on the main opening. A large farm transport had been rented from one of the diggers to pull the slab out. Everyone had cleared the pit and the area around it. Norah was taking no chances at this point in the excavation. The transport’s engine growled as it pulled the stone out. The section they’d carved out was a square meter of solid rock, thick as a Garadan Oak, and extremely heavy. It came free slowly, fighting all the way, but eventually gave in against the insistent pull of the transport. Norah suppressed a joyful laugh, waiting until it had been fully removed from the pit and dragged far enough from the dig site to be out of the way. As soon as the transport rolled to a stop the cheering began anew.  


The yawning chasm revealed by the removal of the stone beckoned enticingly. Norah wanted nothing more than to dash down the ladder and jump into the waiting darkness, but pragmatism prevailed. Summoning A4, she drew out the datapad she’d synced to the hoverdroid. It flew lazily to her side, looking like an oversized bumblebee down to its black and yellow markings. It was tempting to remove the mask to speak to the droid, but unnecessary and - until it had made its environmental checks of the area below - unsafe.  


“All right, A4. I need you to do what we talked about before. I want environmental scans, structural scans, tech scans, and any visuals you can send me. Can you do that for me?”  


The droid beeped swiftly in the affirmative and floated toward the gaping hole. As its rotund little body began to sink into the dark, Norah called out, “Be careful!”  


Ochada came up behind her, his shadow announcing his presence before he stepped into her peripheral vision, and looked over her shoulder at the datapad. A4’s first scans were on the air quality, with the results displayed on the screen. Norah had worried that some decomposing materials might have dangerously offgassed, or some form of spore or mold may have contaminated the air below. There was also the potential for a trace of ancient disease lingering among the detritus, waiting in the sealed temple for some fool to come along and release it. However, the droid showed nothing but clean, if stagnant, air.  


“It’s clear,” the Arjaxi said happily.  


“Looks like it,” she replied, forcing her excitement down even as she removed the face mask.  


She could smell it now, the difference in the air. It was subtle, wafting up from the hole they’d made and mixing with the gentle breeze flowing through the valley, but it was distinct. The air smelled stale and musty, reminiscent of old libraries and unused rooms in empty houses, but magnified by millennia. It wasn’t quite unpleasant but, though she couldn’t say exactly why, some primitive part of her brain didn’t like it.  


The visuals coming from the little droid were more promising than the smell. The room beneath her feet seemed to have been an observation deck - dark spaces above stone benches appeared to have once been windows, carefully and thoroughly closed up against the ravages of time and weather. Intricate patterns swirled over the walls, ceiling, and floor, not unlike those that covered the roof itself. Apart from the blank sections of the windows, the only other break was in the center of the floor. It appeared to be a trap door, and the only way down into the rest of the building. What little dust there was came solely from the minute sections of the roof they’d dropped below. No moisture, mold, fungi, or other growths were present on the walls and, other than the remains of the roof section, the floors were clean and dry. As thoroughly as the ancient Jedi - or who she hoped had been Jedi - had sealed the building against the elements, everything A4 scanned was clean and dirt-free, as if they’d left the place only a short while ago. The chances of the rest of the building having been similarly preserved were rising by the moment.  


A brief message from the droid scrolled across the bottom of the datapad. Being out of audio range, it was easier for it to simply write.

“It wants to know if we are going to open the door,” Ochada read. “Are we? It’ll be dark soon. We don’t have much daylight left.”  


“But droids don’t need daylight. We can open up the lower levels to A4, and get a night’s sleep while it scans everything in range.”  


“That works for me.”  


Scooping up the nearest prybar from the stack of tools, he moved to climb down the ladder. After a moment, Norah followed suit, picking up a headlamp and heading for the ladder. Pausing half-way down, Ochada asked, “Are you sure you want to do that?”  


With a smile, she replied, “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m going in first.”  


The Arjaxi shrugged his secondary shoulders - always the most expressive set - and continued down. As Norah climbed into the pit after him, he retrieved one of the additional ladders from another wall and lowered it down into the black, aided by the light A4 provided. Setting the headlamp around the upper brim of her goggles, Norah grinned up at him and turned to climb down into the temple. The hoverdroid chirped up at her, watching her descent as if its observation would make her hands steadier and her steps surer. The proportions of the ladders were made for Arjaxi bodies, not human ones, so the rungs were spaced relatively far apart, but excited as she was it felt as if she floated down as easily as the droid had.  


When her feet hit the floor the sense of unreality that had set in as soon as the stone was lifted clear seemed to double. Hers were the first feet to touch this floor in countless centuries. She was the first person to enter this room, this building, in aeons. The last people here, if everything she’d pieced together was right, had been Jedi Knights.  


Ochada leaned his head down through the opening, wryly asking, “Can I come down now, or do you need a minute?”  


She waved him down, then slowly circled the room. The carvings on the walls looked completely different when seen with her own eyes, albeit through her goggles, than through the images sent by A4 to her datapad. Tentatively reaching out, she ran her fingers over the grooves set into the wall, tracing the pattern. It swirled endlessly, knotting and unravelling in intricate waves. There was a subtle quality to the whole that made her think the pattern had been cut by hand, probably by a single person. Even though they were long since turned to dust, here their work remained, pristine and beautiful as the last time anyone had looked at it.  


While she traced the pattern further and further along the wall, Ochada worked the end of the prybar into the edge of the door in the floor. It had been painted over with a sealant, the same as the windows, completely locking the room away from the elements that would eventually reclaim the temple structure’s exterior, but the edges were imperfect. At a guess, he’d say the door and the floor around it had been coated while it was open, and the painter had closed it after he or she descended into the lower part of the building. There was some bubbling and uneven layers near the hinges - still visible under the coat - and the handle. The sealant cracked reluctantly under the pressure of the prybar, but only shallow chips came away, while the rest stayed firm.  


“I don’t think this is going to work,” he said, wagging the bar in Norah’s direction. “I definitely won’t be able to open this before we run out of light.”  


The weak sunlight hadn’t reached the pit, let alone the room beneath, so all illumination came from A4 and Norah’s headlamp as it was. However, she could tell the Arjaxi was getting tired. His circadian rhythm was tied to the brief day/night cycle of this world, so - though she could go for three or four local days before reaching her own equivalent of a single full day - he was ready to wind down for the night.  


“A4, can you tell me what that substance is?” Norah asked, picking up a sliver Ochada had gouged out and holding it out in the droid’s direction.  


A small tray extended from the round, metal body and she placed the sealant inside, allowing A4 to examine the material in depth. After a moment it let out a swift series of chirps and beeps, informing her that while it couldn’t make out the exact composition it had an idea of how to get through. Norah swept a hand toward the door and took a step back, allowing the droid to make whatever attempt it thought might work. Extending a slim, metal arm down toward the floor, A4 triggered the torch function, producing a narrow, blue flame that quickly set the ancient pitch bubbling and melting. Within moments the droid had burned away the sealant around the door and on its hinges, floating back to give Ochada space to attempt to open it again.  


Norah replaced her face mask, belatedly realising she should have done so before being exposed to the fumes from the the melting sealant, with the Arjaxi doing the same while simultaneously thrusting the prybar between the door and its jam. Without the sealant to hold it in place, the door fought against the pressure but came up slowly. The hinges creaked viciously, as the sealant had permeated throughout and A4 had only managed to burn off the surface material, but they moved nonetheless. The musty smell was even more pronounced, reaching even through the face mask, as the stagnant air below shifted with fresh movement. A4 scanned quickly for pathogens and contaminants, finding nothing at all to be concerned by.  


The light suddenly shifted above as worklights came on around the dig site, signalling the loss of the last dregs of sunlight. It was officially night. Reluctantly waving A4 down to examine the facilities below, Norah turned back to the ladder out, beginning the climb out of the temple. Morning would come quickly, very quickly in fact, so it was better to let the droid do its work while getting some food and a brief bit of rest. Still, the idea of leaving now, after finally gaining entrance to the complex, grated on her nerves. Morning couldn’t come fast enough.  



	3. Revelation

### Revelation

### Norah

Between the sedative required to fall asleep and the stimulant required to function in the morning - a paltry few hours following sundown - Norah felt lightheaded and dizzy. The wash of harsh, red light coating everything in sight didn’t help the surreal sensation that her brain and body were occupying separate planets, but today was not the day for waiting out the chemicals. Today was the day her work came to fruition. Today was the day she unearthed the secrets of the ancient Jedi.  


She dressed from wrist to ankle in sturdy, practical clothing fit for traipsing through the bowels of an excavated ruin. Wrapping her voluminous hair in a scarf, partly to keep it out of the way and free of the ever-present red dust, she scanned the tent for anything else she might need. Her goggles were already around her neck, and the headlamp fit like a crown over her head. With her mask clipped to her belt and her gloves and boots covering all extremities, she was ready. A frisson of excitement ran down her spine, causing her to shiver, and bringing a massive smile to her face. Drawing a necklace up from beneath her shirt, she tightly clutched the globe pendant shaped like her homeworld, feeling the raised outlines of continents dig into the skin of her palm.  


“You’ve brought me this far. Lead me a little further,” she whispered, speaking to the spirits of her ancestors. “Take me to my birthright.”  


The camp was alive with movement, the former diggers now clearing away unnecessary equipment and prepping the descent teams. Ochada and Forchada had already divided the others into three groups - one each to be led by themselves, and a third, smaller unit to take care of the worksite above. No one had encroached on the area since they’d begun the dig, but Norah was taking no chances that today be the day that changed. She threaded between the tents and joined the Arjaxi as they finalized instructions to the men.  


“You have all been linked to the droid’s scans. It has given us a preliminary layout to work with. Forchada’s team will take the east wing and head down into the lower levels on that side,” Ochada said, demonstrating on his own datapad where his cousin’s group would be working. Pointing to the other side of the scanned area, he added, “The Voss and I will be taking our team toward the west. Be careful. Test the ground before you walk on it, keep your environment masks on in any unverified area, and leave a marker on any promising find. We are looking for functional terminals and data storage first, dead terminals second, artifacts third, but keeping safety the priority at all times. Do not take unnecessary risks. We have time enough to do this well.”  


Forchada picked up the thread, stating, “You have been given your cams as well. Use them to document what you find. Remember, we are walking in the footsteps of our ancestors. Do not dishonor them.” Norah started, surprised by the echo of her own call to her forebears.  


The Arjaxi teams split, picking up their tools and heading toward the pit. Forchada led his team down first, which Norah would have minded had she not been the first down the night before. She couldn’t begrudge them first access to the next floor when the ruins, Jedi or not, were a part of the Arjaxi’s history and homeland. Regardless of whatever else the ruins revealed, something of their antecedents had to be preserved below, even if it was nothing more than the preferred style of decoration thousands of years before.  


A4 had worked quickly through the night, working its way down through the first few floors of the structure from end to end, each level a bit larger than the one before due to the slight stepped pyramid-esque shape of the building. The droid had sent them a detailed three dimensional map of every area it could reach with its scanners, stopped in a few places by sealed doors and blocked stairwells, but otherwise complete. The layout was fairly straightforward but the upper levels seemed to mostly have been used as residences, honeycombed with dozens upon dozens of small dormitory rooms. No electronic signals had shown up on the droid’s sensors so far, but Norah had hope that further down into the complex there would still be something salvageable, even if they had to provide a power source to awaken it.  


Slipping her mask in place, Norah led the second team inside. Forchada and his men were noisily wandering deeper into the gloom, already out of sight by the time she stepped off the ladder into the former observation station. A second ladder descended through the trapdoor, now wedged up and open, with a power cable strung with work lights slowly being pulled through by the east group. Uneven light moved along the walls as the lamps were dragged along, causing strange movements to the shadows. A second strand came down with her own group, but she wasn’t waiting for the intermediate illumination to show her the way. Flipping on her own headlamp and moving with a purpose, Norah bypassed the bedrooms, leaving them for the others in her team to go over. A few mouldering bedsheets and dusty trinkets weren’t worth her time. Taking the stairs at the end of the corridor, she descended further down, following the path the droid had outlined. She divided her attention between the layout on the datapad and the structure around her. A4 had tagged what appeared to be training rooms, common areas, and a dining hall. While the droid continued to map the area below, she was hoping to find a terminal that could be powered up remotely in one of the classrooms.  


“Slow down,” Ochada called after her, his voice echoing in the strange curvature of the stairwell. “Don’t get too far ahead.”  


“There’s classrooms down here,” she replied, keeping the same speed. “You can meet me when the dorms are cleared.”  


“Voss! We don’t know if it’s safe yet. The floors-”  


“If it collapses on me you can say ‘I told you so’ later.”  


Three levels of dormitory rooms went by until Norah stepped out of the stairwell. It felt as if the building was swallowing her whole. The only break in the darkness came from her own lights, too weak to even reach the high ceilings unless she stared straight up, and an eerie silence blanketed everything. Even her footsteps seemed muffled in the dark. The rasp of her breath within the environment mask dominated all other sounds. A primitive, animalistic part of her brain flared to life, making her feel small, vulnerable, isolated, and targeted - as if there was something with her in the dark. Something watching her. Something dangerous. It was ridiculous - nothing could survive centuries sealed inside while the building was slowly consumed by the valley, but even if it could A4 hadn’t sensed so much as a single living microbe. Regardless, cold logic didn’t change the way she felt or alleviate the sense of eyes on her, and only force of will kept her moving forward.  


The entrance to the presumed classroom appeared in her circle of light. In the false-color reading of her goggles it looked as green as the Sea of Ataraxia on Hafara. Gentle swirling patterns flowed from top to bottom, almost obscuring the division running up the center of the door. Norah pushed against the closer panel, to no effect. Pushing harder, she felt a slight movement, but it took her leaning her entire bodyweight against it before the door actually moved. Slipping through, she found herself in the expected defunct classroom. Apart from the darkness, it looked as if the students could have walked out only moments before.  


Circling around the individual workstations, none of which included any kind of computer terminal, she made her way to the head of the classroom, searching for the instructor’s station. It was almost unrecognizable, so old-fashioned she could barely identify which ports were which.  


“A4, how far are you from my location?” she radioed to the little droid, receiving a response in the form of a blip on her datapad. It was quite a bit further down into the structure, far enough that it would take time for the droid to reach her. “Come on up. I found a console. I need help to see if we can access anything.”  


While the droid made its way to her, Norah went through the classrooms of two additional levels but found the same thing repeated with only minute differences. The rooms were stark, no decorations hanging on the walls, no physical materials on shelves or in drawers to indicate what had been taught there. It was haunting, empty, dead. Frustration mounted with every empty room, every bare workstation, every dusty shelf. Where were the artifacts, the valuables? Where was the information? Lashing out, Norah kicked a chair across the room, listening with some small satisfaction to the clatter as it hit the wall.  


“Come on, you stupid Jedi! You couldn’t have left me anything? You had to take it all with you when you left?!”  


Stalking out of the bare classroom, she sought out the last potential hiding place. At the end of the hall, the final room was even more bare than the others. There were no desks or workstations of any kind for the students - just a large, empty space - and the only seat was a simple stool tucked in a corner at the head of the room. Sinking onto the chair, she bit back a sigh.  


“Please don’t let this be for nothing. I’ve come so far. I’m so close.” The whispered entreaty hung in the air, unanswered.  


Sitting in the dark, Norah waited for A4 to join her. The classrooms were too bare to provide anything of interest to look through, so she scanned the building’s layout for the next likely target if the droid couldn’t make at least one of the dead consoles work. The dull light from the datapad glinted off the wall, catching her attention. A subtle form she couldn’t quite make out was carved from floor to ceiling, but unlike the other designs she’d seen so far it didn’t appear to be an abstract, swirling pattern. There was something concrete and definitive there, but on a scale too large to see with only her weak, little headlamp. Reaching into one of her many pockets, she retrieved a palm-sized orb, quickly crushing it and throwing it straight up at the ceiling. Adhering to the roof, the orb burst into brilliant orange light - revealing the room in its entirety.  


Norah stood frozen, staring up at the massive mural stretching along the wall. Two humanoid figures stood in conflict, their wide stances and raised arms managing to imply a fluidity of movement in a static image. What caught her attention wasn’t the figures themselves, or the brilliance of the workmanship, but the unmistakable weapon each of the fighters wielded. Clashing at the center of the mural were a pair of lightsabers.  


“I was right,” she breathed, feeling a grin take over her face. “Jedi.”  


The bas relief figures towered from floor to ceiling, with robes swirling around their legs and a halo of light surrounding the main body of the blade of their unique weapons. Pressing her hands to her mouth through the material of her mask, Norah fought to hold in a scream of excitement. Pure, unadulterated validation poured over her. From a derelict storage site buried in the Undercity of Coruscant to a minuscule, backwater world deep in the Galactic Core, she had ferreted out this forgotten site. There had been so much doubt, so much worry - that she’d come to the wrong planet and the Jedi had never been there at all, that the site had been destroyed or was inaccessible or that she wouldn’t be able to find it, or that the temple she’d spent the last of her borrowed funds to dig out was little more than an interesting footnote in ancient Arjaxi architecture. But here, here was the proof that she was right - that after the universe itself had forgotten this place existed she’d found it, found them.  


Unable to contain her joy any longer, she threw her arms in the air and screamed, “Yes! I did it!”  


A surge of embarrassment followed the exclamation, but with no one around to hear and judge one way or the other she ignored the feeling and reveled in the moment. Drawing the globe pendant out again and pressing it against her lips, she whispered, “Thank you. Thank you for leading me here.”  


No one she knew had ever accomplished such a feat as this. Most of the galaxy had forgotten the Jedi had even existed. Barely half a century had passed since the fall of the Republic and the destruction of the Jedi Order, but here she was, standing in one of their temples. The Jedi themselves had forgotten this place, let it be swallowed up by Arjanaz, but still she’d found it. And she’d find their secrets, too. Everything they’d left in this place was hers.  



	4. Two Steps Forward

### Two Steps Forward

### Norah

Norah’s legs had started to go slightly numb from sitting on the narrow stool by the time A4 bumbled through the doorway, floating like a fat bee toward its mistress. She pointed up at the mural and said, “Look what I found.”  


The droid turned to scan the wall, beeping excitedly and confirming her reading of the image.  


“That’s what I think, too. They have to be Jedi. No one else used weapons like that. And, look, the arms. They both only have two. If this was Arjaxi work they’d have six.” When A4 beeped an acerbic reply, she added, “I’m not saying that the Arjaxi can’t be Jedi. But the majority of Force users come from bibrachial species. Even with the simplification of the forms around the head and face, there’s no mistaking four extremities for eight.”  


The droid tipped slightly to the side, its equivalent of tilting one’s head.  


“What? Look at it again if you don’t agree. They may not necessarily be human, but they’re not Arjaxi.”  


A4 turned toward the mural again, scanning in depth. While it worked, Norah asked, “Have you been able to tell anything about the timeline here? Anything in the architecture or something downstairs that shows how long ago this place was made, or when they left?”  


A series of shrill tones in the negative dashed that hope. Pinning down exactly when the temple had been operational would help her figure out when in galactic history its heyday had been, and what technology they could expect to look for. The droid turned back to her, awaiting instruction. Casting a final glance up at the combatants, she gestured to the droid to follow and made her way to the nearest of the other classrooms.  


Her goggles shifted instantly to counteract the darkness of the hallway, pitch black in comparison to the relative brightness of the training room. Within moments she was directing the droid to the console in the first classroom, waiting to find out if it could communicate with the ancient equipment. Reaching out with a multi-functional connector, A4 tried a number of methods to plug in to the outdated computer, repeatedly adjusting the prong until it finally found a setting that worked.  


“Can you power it up?”  


The droid made a low whirring sound - equivalent to a long-suffering sigh - and hooked in an additional adapter, trying to supply enough energy to fire up the old console. After a moment the monitor flickered to life with a grating whine.  


“Cut the monitor if you have to. I just want the data. Whatever’s on there.”  


The pale blue light on the screen cut sharply to black as the droid followed instruction, working on copying the information rather than displaying it. Norah watched the feed on her datapad as A4 simultaneously downloaded and transfered what remained on the console. Mostly it seemed to be lesson plans and materials about local flora and fauna, weather patterns, and geology. The device appeared to be localised, now little more than a unit connected to a database that was no longer online. Wherever the main cache had been, this classroom didn’t contain it, and - regardless of how interested her team might be in it - information about Arjanaz from millennia ago was not what Norah had crossed star systems to find. Biting back a sigh, she said, “We may have to download each terminal individually.”  


The droid chittered a sharp negative, pinging her datapad. At the base of the expanded blueprint a new image indicated a large storeroom, beneath the main entry hall.  


“What is this? Old milk crates and winter coats?”  


The droid rocked from side to side, and rattled off a shrill reply.  


“Servers? Are you sure?” she demanded, fighting back a grin.  


The droid’s scanners hadn’t been able to detail the contents of the room, but from what it could sense there appeared to be something resembling large quantities of unpowered technology locked away in the basement of the temple, along with what seemed like the former generator.  


“Forget this console! Let’s go look!”  


Tearing down the stairwell, and ignoring the discomfort in her knees from so very many steps, Norah rushed down dozens of flights of stairs to the bottom of the keep. The main stairwell, which connected the classrooms and dormitories, ended on the former ground floor. A banquet room took up most of the left side of the building while the kitchens dominated the right. There was a single wide door at the rear of the building leading to a squared off area she could see on the datapad’s layout which had once been a courtyard. Even with her excitement for the potential data below, Norah spared a thought at what it must have been like before the valley had consumed the complex, with the tower standing proud above and students practicing fighting forms in the yard. Now the yard was buried under a hundred meters of soil, unreachable and lost.  


The former entrance was a pair of doors wider than some of the classrooms above. They were massive, heavy things made of stone. More carvings ran from floor to ceiling around them, depicting what she guessed was the founding of the temple. Two- and six-armed creatures worked together around the base of the building, as it must have appeared before it was swallowed. It had been beautiful. The building wasn’t truly a pyramid at all, but a layered pseudo-stepped pyramid crossed with an ancient fort. Towers stood at four points around the main building, with a defensive wall connecting them, but they were separate from and below the central building itself. She was glad they hadn’t attempted to go in through one of the other minute sections still aboveground, seeing the mural. It would have led into the external defensive structure, rather than the temple itself. A4 bobbed beside her, scanning the image for the data catalog, but offered no comment.  


Norah turned, putting the doors at her back, and imagined walking into the temple through the main entrance, as she’d once hoped to do. The hall was less imposing than she’d dreamt it. The ceiling wasn’t so high, and the walls closer together. The dining hall was visible through open doorways, and the long tables and benches could be seen even in the relatively weak light from her headlamp and the droid. It wasn’t as pretty or luxurious as she’d thought it would be. There was too much of a sense of the workaday to everything, even with the long centuries of disuse. This place hadn’t been one for sitting idly and enjoying the finer things. It was too practical, too harsh, too poor. There were no riches here for the students who’d walked these halls or the Knights who passed on the secrets of the Jedi Order, no wealth but the wealth of information. It was a fortune she prayed remained in the servers below.  


The basement storeroom was accessed through the kitchen, but it only took a moment to clarify why the droid hadn’t been able to get inside.  


“Locked? There hasn’t been a single locked door before this,” she noted, flashing the droid a smile. “And why do we lock doors? To keep people away from our nice things. Our _valuable_ things.”  


She could have taken the time to pick the lock, or had A4 cut their way through. The door was cheap local wood, and it wouldn’t have taken the droid long. Instead she put her back the door and kicked it as hard as she could. The impact ran up her leg forcefully, but the door didn’t open. Kicking it again and again, she poured her frustration at the empty rooms above and her hope for the contents of the storeroom below into each blow. On the fourth kick the lock gave way and the door smashed against the wall inside. Triumph replaced all earlier emotions as she gestured to the droid to precede her down the narrow stairs.  


The storeroom seemed to be the only place the Jedi hadn’t gutted when they abandoned the facility. Crates were stacked in haphazard fashion everywhere. Dusty piles of fabric lay mouldering in one corner, which Norah thought for a moment might actually be the winter coats she’d joked about. Closer inspection revealed tablerunners of a fancier make than everyday use would require.  


“Must have been for special occasions. Or visitors,” she murmured. “A4, I don’t see tech. Where are we going?”  


The droid bumbled away from her, threading through narrow spaces she had to turn and squeeze between. One stack of crates already teetering precariously tipped over as she tried to get around it, crashing to the floor and splintering to pieces. Norah barely managed to turn her face quickly enough to avoid a massive splinter travelling fast enough to pierce skin. When the contents of the various boxes stopped rolling in every direction she stooped to pick up the closest one. The script on the can was so old-fashioned as to be nearly illegible, but after a moment’s thought she was able to read it.  


“Well, gastro-historians will be pleased to know that the ancient Jedi stocked their pantry with tinned fish paste. I’m sure it was as disgusting when they bought it as it would be if I opened it now,” she stated, tossing the can into the shadows.  


A stone wall bisected the basement area, just on the other side of another row of crates. Norah managed not to upset that one, reaching the locked metal door where A4 ‘stood’. A half-circle of bare space extended around the door for two meters, leaving space for them to work without having to rearrange the old food stores.  


“Promising,” she said, sinking to the floor to examine the lock. It was more complex than the one leading from the kitchen, which made sense if they had data stores to protect behind it.  


“I won’t be able to pick this. You’ll have to cut through it,” she said, moving far out of the way.  


The hoverdroid lowered to the height of the knob, producing a narrow cutting torch. The white-blue flame flared and sparked slightly against the metal, creating a point that quickly turned orange and burned away. A4 outlined the locking mechanism, separating it from the rest of the panel in a matter of moments. Norah let the droid open the door, unsure how close she could safely put her hand to the superheated cut. An excited trill told her what she wanted to hear. The droid floated off to the left, out of her way and in the direction of a monstrously big, antiquated generator. Twin giant, boxy servers rested against the far wall, with a command console sandwiched between them. If they could be powered up like the little classroom console she would finally have what she’d come across the galaxy for.  


A4 drifted lazily around the ancient generator, testing inputs and looking for ways to bring the old beast back to life. Despite its long years out of service it was in good shape and of a type that vaguely resembled current models. The little power supply they used to run the camp equipment on the surface above was a clear descendant of similar machines. Unfortunately, direct interface would drain A4’s own batteries long before powering the generator back up. Twittering this information to Norah, it continued to circle the device and attempt connection.  


“What if we connect the surface generator? Do we have any cables long enough to reach all the way down here?” she asked while looking over the servers for any kind of input to bypass the generator itself. Spotting the first one’s power cabling, she gestured to the droid and said, “What about directly interfacing here? Could you power this up yourself?”  


The power cords at the campsite weren’t even close to long enough to get down past the classroom levels, which the droid told her, even as it moved to her position. She shifted out of the way, nearly knocking her head against the corner of the command console’s desk, and pointed to the power cable running to the server. The hoverdroid moved in as close as possible, which proved difficult given the tight space between the back of the tower and the wall. Reaching out with its longest attachments allowed only just allowed it to connect with the cord but the insulation prevented pushing a charge.  


“I can try to pull the tower away from the wall,” Norah said doubtfully, giving the casement an experimental tug. “Or Ochada might be able to.”  


The server was heavy, its protective shelving even heavier, and even Norah pulling - and, when that failed, pushing - with all her strength didn’t shift it at all. Taking up her datapad, she selected the six-armed strongman, but hesitated before calling. She hadn’t told them what they were looking for specifically here. She hadn’t even told them this was a Jedi location. Playing her cards close, she let the dig team believe she was just some eccentric offworlder with an oddly specific interest in Arjaxi history. They knew and didn’t seem to have a problem with her intention to cart off whatever valuables she found, as long as something was gained for them. An expansion of their knowledge of local architecture, of some kind of historical record, some connection to their ancestors - that was all they wanted. It was expected with a dig like this. But the data would be harder to keep from them, and she was honest enough - with herself, at least - to acknowledge that she didn’t want to share it.  


She put the datapad away, calling the droid back out from under the desk.  


“Try the forward inputs. I don’t care if you have to go in through some kind of media port, let’s at least try whatever we can ourselves before we involve anyone else.”  


If A4 had eyebrows it would have quirked one, so it settled for a full-body tilt to the side, making its point within the limitations of its form. Norah gestured impatiently toward the case, knowing the droid well enough to know what that particular attitude meant. The front of the server didn’t have an obvious power input, but there were several different types of ports for various physical formats of data transfer. Pushing electricity through these, however, was likely to fry whatever remained of the storage.  


“Fine, I’ll call Ochada to move the box,” she huffed as the droid gave her the bad news. “And if that doesn’t work, and you’re sure we can’t do anything for the generator, we’ll cut out the cores.”  


Ochada answered the call immediately, his feelers flattened in an Arjaxi grin from his excitement about the work in the upper levels. She could see the other men gently, reverently going through the personal effects left behind in the dormitory rooms.  


“Ah, Voss, it’s wonderful up here. We haven’t found terminals like you wanted, but there are such beautiful things here! It’s like looking through a window to our ancient ancestors! Look at this,” he said, holding up a plain, stone tumbler. “A cup! One of them drank from this!”  


Not having the heart to tell him that in some ways it was more likely they were looking through that window at _her_ ancient ancestors, or a similar group at least, she smiled and tried to share in his excitement. There may well have been some six-armed Jedi trainees who lived in those rooms. She had no reason to think the Arjaxi were incapable of using the Force, it was just far more prevalent among humans, or rather humans were more prevalent across the galaxy than other species and the Force was relatively common among them compared to others. Regardless, his enthusiasm was pure, and she had no intention of putting a damper on it.  


“That’s wonderful,” she said, honestly happy to see her friend so joyful. “But I need your help. I’m down in the basement - we think this is the lowest level - and I found servers! The problem is I can’t move them, and A4 can’t power them from where they are.”  


“It’s what you hoped for!”  


“It might be. There’s a generator, too, but A4 says we don’t have long enough cables to try and hook up our camp generator to anything down here. We think if we can pull the servers forward A4 might be able to power them up,” she explained, ignoring the doubtful tone from the droid, “but I can’t move them myself. Can you come down and try?”  


“We’ll be right down,” he said, severing the connection.  


Settling cross-legged on the floor, Norah looked up at the floating droid. With the cold, hard flagstones digging in to the soft curves of her legs, she envied A4’s ability to literally rise above it. Minor aches and pains were irrelevant and temporary, however, and the surge of excitement that rolled over her pushed them out of her mind. Gently stroking the metal plating of the right-hand tower, she couldn’t wait to see what secrets it held for her.


	5. One Massive Step Back

### One Massive Step Back

### Norah

Only a few minutes passed before Ochada brought his entire group down, leaving Forchada’s men to continue working on the personal chambers. They were all visibly excited, not merely about Norah’s find, but about their own results above. Handling artifacts from the past - carefully and in gloved hands to protect them from the oils of their skin - made them feel connected to the ancients in a way that the month of digging and excavation never could. They were flushed with excitement, visible through the droid’s sensors although the simple false-color reading from Norah’s goggles failed to show her that. It was apparent in their movements, in the tones of their voices, in the giddy atmosphere around them. Their excitement renewed her own, washing away the fretfulness of the past hour.  


“Here they are,” she said, gesturing behind her. It was a redundant action since the servers and generator were the only things in the entire room, albeit on opposite sides, but part of her felt as if she were showing them off. “If we can get them away from the wall, A4 can work on supplying power.”  


The droid whistled its concern, but Norah shushed it, unwilling to allow doubt to throw them off. The Arjaxi split into two sets of three, each moving to work on one of the towers. First pulling the command console out of the way, careful not to upset the user interface, they surrounded each server on three sides and began to pull. The metal creaked and groaned under their ministrations, but it didn’t seem to want to budge. Heart in her throat, Norah watched them struggle against the weight. The left hand server shifted suddenly, moving on a diagonal a few inches away from the wall. It wasn’t quite enough space, but it was a start.  


As they resumed, pushing now to turn it further in the direction it seemed inclined to go, the second server began to move as well. Unlike the first, however, it tipped forward. The men working on it collectively began shouting in alarm, trying and failing to keep it from tipping. A harsh scraping sound filled the room as the base - formerly sitting firmly on the floor - ran over the stone wall behind it, before the entire structure went face-down. The young Arjaxi standing in front, an inexperienced boy called Osili, barely had time to move back before the whole thing crashed to the ground where he’d been standing.  


Norah felt frozen, rooted to the spot, as she stared at the downed tower. Without taking her eyes off the case, she asked flatly, “Are you all right?”  


“I’m sorry. I don’t know what happened,” he whispered, afraid of her quiet reaction.  


“Are you all right?” she repeated, not realizing she was sinking to the floor.  


Ochada grabbed her by the arm, holding her upright and giving her a little shake. She could feel his anger at her reaction, but she couldn’t tear her eyes off of the broken equipment. There was no chance of salvaging something from that wreck. If centuries of silent decay hadn’t ruined it the fall certainly did.  


“I’m fine,” the young man protested, reaching out toward her. “Are you?”  


Ochada shook her again, bringing her attention back to him and the others. His disapproval was palpable, and when she looked at the boy she understood why. Osili’s normally dark scales had turned almost white from fear, not only from nearly being crushed, but from her reaction. To the Arjaxi hierarchy was sacred, and as long as she was running the dig that meant she wasn’t merely Norah, but The Voss - leader of their temporary tribe. He was terrified of what the ‘tribal leader’ would do to him for his failure.  


Softening at the sight of the frightened boy, she shook off Ochada’s grip and said, earnestly this time, “Are you all right?”  


“Yes. I’m sorry. I don’t know what happened.”  


“It’s not your fault,” she reassured him. “We know everything here is delicate, and old. We should have been more careful. I should have been more careful. I’m glad you weren’t hurt, Osili.”  


Color began creeping back into his flesh, slowly, but it was a good start. The others, moving slowly as if in the face of a predator that could attack at any moment, circled around him and the downed tower. Ochada shot her a meaningful glance, showing approval at her handling of the situation once she’d recovered herself. It was cold comfort in the face of the loss of the tower. Sitting on his haunches, the Arjaxi headman looked over the downed equipment, shaking his head as he picked up a fragment that had broken loose.  


“It’s destroyed. I’m sorry, Voss.”  


“I figured,” she said, a sensation like her throat closing rolling over her. If she fell apart again the boy would take it badly, and the others would lose respect for her. She couldn’t afford to have the team disintigrate so close to reaching her goals. “We’ll have to be more careful with the other. Take the case on this one apart. I don’t care if it’s in microscopic pieces. Everything goes to the surface.”  


Leaving the hoverdroid to observe the rest of the salvage, Norah stepped out the room, just on the other side of the door. Sliding down the wall to the floor, she pressed her hands over her mouth and silently screamed.


	6. Small Comfort

### Small Comfort

### Norah

The weight of frustration didn’t stop Norah from finishing the day in the server room. Once the surviving tower had been pushed far enough back, A4 was able to get behind it and try to establish a connection. The droid voiced concerns about the power requirements to get the server up and, hopefully, running, but Norah told it to proceed. The surface generator might not be able to reach the basement room, but it could certainly recharge the droid. In the meantime, the subdued Arjaxi carefully disassembled the remains of the fallen tower and carefully began walking them back up to the surface. It would be nearly impossible for anything to be reconstructed from them, but she wasn’t willing to give up without trying. She’d done the impossible before. Ochada left last, gently laying a companionable hand on her back before heading out.  


“I’ll see you up top,” she called as he left the room. She wasn’t going to follow until A4 had news, one way or the other.  


The droid whistled for her attention even as a light came on at the center of the server. It informed her, rather smugly, that it had succeeded and was actually able to connect to the ancient machine.  


“How’s it look? Can you read it?”  


A sharp series of beeps replied, putting a smile back on her face for the first time since the accident.  


“I apologize if it seemed I was implying anything about your abilities, my darling droid. I never doubted you for a second,” she said with a laugh. “How long until we can go through it? I want everything copied. Everything.”  


A4 chittered quickly, indicating it would take quite some time. Even without its counterpart the server was massive. What that data actually was they wouldn’t know until it was all downloaded and, in all likelihood, heavily reconstructed and translated.  


“Do you have anything now? A time frame? When was this used last?”  


Squawking at her to stop pestering, the droid focused on the task at hand, telling her that it would be ready when it was ready, and distractions didn’t help.  


“All right, all right. You’ve got a point. I know it’ll take longer but I’d also like you to simul-sync to my datapad,” she said, pulling the planet-shaped storage drive out of her shirt and attaching it to the pad. The chain dangled, tinkling prettily. “Ancestors forfend something happen to this one, too, without getting a backup.”  


The droid whistled in the affirmative, already sending the information to her datapad as it worked. Actually reading it would have to wait, at least until morning. Wishing it a good night, Norah left A4 to its task and began the long climb back to the surface, watching the numbers on her screen slowly climb with her.  


Nearly a dozen floors higher, the open doors of the second highest dormitory level spoke to the efforts of the Arjaxi teams earlier in the day. Ignoring her creaking knees and the burn in her thighs, she stepped inside one of the rooms. It was a simple setup, with two small dressers, two narrow beds on either side of the room and a pair of small tables between. The drawers of the dressers hung half-way open, empty and dark. They’d been stripped bare, either by the fleeing Jedi or the dig site workers. A set of matching cups, twins to the one Ochada had so happily shown her, sat on the nightstands, along with a single shared pitcher. They were made of some kind of earthenware, strong and durable enough to last through the centuries but less than lovely.  


A shadow on the floor drew her closer. Tucked between the bed and table to the right was a small object, half-hidden from sight. It would have been easy to overlook and, picking it up, she realised it must have fallen there by accident. The was no way its owner would have left it behind deliberately. It was a stick barrette, the top a curved piece that reminded her of waves pierced by a stick that looked like a sliced spiral shell had been covered in metal. The clasp was black with age and the pin had dulled to a coppery patina but it was still deeply beautiful. It spoke of its owner’s personality, probably a reminder of some watery homeworld, yet it was an eminently practical item. Holding it in her hand, Norah looked at room again. It was more real, somehow, with this new connection to the girl who’d lived there ages before. Pocketing the barrette, the first and only physical item she’d found in the entire temple than seemed to be worth taking, Norah turned away and resumed her trek to the surface.


	7. Devastation

### Devastation

### Norah

Dawn revealed dark storm clouds from horizon to horizon. Norah had worked through the brief hours of the night, sitting quiet in the equipment tent and watching the clouds roll in while she sifted through shattered computer components. She’d hoped to find something - anything - not utterly destroyed from the fall but as morning arrived all that she had was a substantial pile of broken boards and smashed chips. It would have been easier to go through with her droid’s assistance, but that couldn’t be helped. Glancing at her datapad she was happy to see the upload from A4 had continued to progress overnight, with an astronomical amount of information transferred from the antique server to her little globe pendant. Whatever else had changed in the centuries following the exodus from the temple, data storage had certainly improved.  


Thunder rolled over the world, abruptly waking the Arjaxi diggers. Sleepy, startled faces popped out of several tents, receiving a little smile and wave from their industrious boss. It wasn’t the first time they’d woken to find her still up and about. If they’d had a thought to envy her the longer hours it faded at the sight of the work she performed while they slept. With the others stirring from their beds, Norah pulled her scarf up, loosely draping it over hair secured with the clasp she’d taken from the temple. She watched with fondness as her men piled out, turning to their morning ablutions and setting up for the day’s work. It had become a comforting routine, with the Arjaxi taking turns at the water barrels to splash handfuls over their heads and lift their hands to the sun in supplication for a good day. Even though the custom was nothing like that of her home it had become familiar. Before long there would be breakfast cooking and then the daily work assignments to hand out. Part of her wondered if she would miss this when there was nothing more to take from the temple and it was time to move on.  


“Any joy?” Ochada asked, still dripping from morning prayer, pointing to the pile of wreckage.  


“No, nothing here.”  


“And the droid?” he asked, sinking to sit on the crate beside her.  


She glanced at the datapad, noting the progression, and lied through her teeth. “It hasn’t been able to get power to the server yet. It’s still working on it.”  


“That’s disappointing,” he replied, empathizing with the emotions she didn’t actually feel. “We’ll get it going today. I’m sure of it.”  


Norah pressed her lips in a facsimile of a smile, saddened by her own inability to share with her friend. If she were a better person, less selfish, more open, she would have told him the truth. She still could, but even opening her mouth to apologize and be honest didn’t cause the lie to dissipate. She’d tell him, she promised herself, but not until she had the first look.  


“We need a longer power line. Something to reach that basement level. If we can’t get the generator going we might be able to use it on the server itself.”  


The Arjaxi looked thoughtful, making her feel like more of a monster, as he said, “We could try to rig something out of what we have here. I don’t know how well it would work, but the nearest town with something that sizable for sale would be Lienwar, and that’s almost a hundred kilometers away. It wouldn’t be cheap either. We’re too far from the cities to get good prices on things like that.”  


“Well, let’s see what we can do. Whoever is good with that sort of thing should work on the power line. Everybody else can keep going through the upper levels. We’ll let A4 keep trying things in peace.”  


He nodded, rising to give the others their instructions. The first drops of rain began to patter against the side of the tent, softly turning the world wet. Ochada reached out one hand to feel it fall, gently rolling his fingers under the droplets, unconsciously mimicking the action with his facial tentacles.  


“If we’re lucky the rain will stay mild,” he said. “Too much will be a problem below. It could cause the pit to collapse.”  


“You don’t think the supports will be enough?”  


He turned to face her, shaking his head. “You forget, that’s how the valley filled up in the first place. This dirt was made to move in water.”  


Norah glanced up at the clouds, more ominous-looking than they had been a moment before. A harsh chill ran down her spine.  


“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”  


The camp noises echoed strangely in the rain, underpinned by the repetitive sound of the water falling. The men carried on as usual, passing out bowls of breakfast hash, chatting among themselves as if it were an ordinary day. Norah ate beside them, half-heartedly listening to their banter, watching the clouds with trepidation. She loved the rain at home, always running outside to stand in it no matter when or where she was, but this was different. Ochada’s warning set her on edge, not trusting the dirt under her feet. Looking at the others, happily digging in to their food and jostling each other with friendly shoves and pats, she dreaded the idea of them being trapped below under the slick weight of mud. Ochada laughed and joked with the rest of them, seemingly unconcerned about the possibility he’d raised, still handing out assignments to continue cataloguing the effects in the dormitories. If he wasn’t worried surely she didn’t need to be. It didn’t stop her, however. A sense of something bad coming hovered at the edge of her mind, keeping her on edge.  


Another roll of thunder drowned out the conversation for a moment, travelling from the east. It was still far away, lightning strikes safely distant, but it startled a few of the men. Osili had jumped at the sound, causing the others to laugh at his expense. Norah smiled gently in his direction. It was easy to forget he was still technically a child, given his size and ability to work as hard as the others, but there were times when his youth became very apparent. She probably wouldn’t have let him come on if his father, Masili, wasn’t also part of the dig team to make sure the boy wasn’t overworked or poorly treated. It wouldn’t be long before the school season would resume and he’d have to return to his studies. Unlike the rest of his peers he’d be going back with stories of his part in uncovering an ancient, forgotten temple and a fat wallet.  


Norah didn’t notice the sound right away. The patter of the rain disguised the noise until it was right on top of them. A throaty mechanical roar, deep and intimidating, preceded the appearance of a shuttle. Its exceptionally long wings folded up gracefully as it approached their site, preparing to land. A second ship, not so loud or sleek, accompanied it, hitting the ground first and popping open in an instant.  


“What’s going on?” Norah wondered aloud, echoed by some of the Arjaxi.  


Visibility was less than ideal between the clouds and rain, but the shining white-armoured bodies pouring out of the transport were unmistakable.  


“Stormtroopers!”  


The men broke apart in an instant, throwing down their bowls and running out of the tent. A few precise blasts from the incoming soldiers stopped them from going far, turning them back to the center of the camp. Sitting frozen until the shots shook her from her stupor, Norah rose to her feet and ran to the equipment tent. It was toward the rear of their setup, furthest from the approaching soldiers. She reached the tent just as one of the Arjaxi barrelled past her, running as fast as he could for the open space beyond. Slapping the tarpaulin out of her way, she grabbed her datapad, summoning her droid with a warning of what was coming for them. The stormtroopers were shouting orders at the panicking men, closing in on her location. A notice in the upper left corner of the screen indicated that the upload had completed, so she detached the pendant and flung it over her head, tucking it into her shirt in an instant. Heart hammering, she saw white-clad figures coming in fast, dangerous-looking weapons pointing at anything that moved. There was nowhere to hide, nowhere to run.  


A helmeted face ducked under the tent flap, with the barrel of its blaster rifle leading the way. Dark goggles stood out sharply against the pale, sleek form, almost skull-like in its simplicity.  


“Don’t move!” the trooper ordered, pointing the weapon at her. “Show me your hands!”  


She didn’t think about the conflicting statements, raising her hands in the universal posture of defenselessness. It was less effective with only one empty, palm showing, and the other holding an object.  


“Drop it!”  


There was no hesitation but this time she wasn’t as obedient. Instead of letting the datapad drop from her fingers Norah raised it a little higher and brought it down as fast and as hard as she could on the corner of the work table. The pad shattered, exploding into a hundred component parts. If the stormtrooper shot her in response she’d have earned it - in a manner of speaking - but she wasn’t going to let them have her data, no matter why they were here. Any of the other pads around camp could contact A4, but hers was the only one the droid had copied its findings to.  


“I said ‘drop it’, scum, not ‘smash it’!” the trooper shouted, stepping in fast to hit her with the butt of his blaster.  


Norah ducked automatically, raising her arm to shield her face from the blow. Pain exploded as the weapon connected, radiating from her forearm up to her shoulder. She went down to her knees, gripping her arm with one hand and holding the other up in a pathetic attempt to hold the soldier off from hitting her again. A gloved fist twisted into her shirt, pulling it tight around her neck, and jerked her to her feet. He pushed her hard against the table, causing the edge to bite into her back, before roughly pulling her from the tent.  


The Arjaxi were being herded to a clearing at the edge of the camp near the entrance to the temple. White armour surrounded the six-armed locals, corralling them in the middle of a circle of soldiers, and pushing them to their knees. The stormtrooper led Norah to the holding area, shaking and pushing her with every few steps. It was impossible for her to fully get her feet under her with his constant jostling. His grip on her shirt was unbreakable, half-choking her, but even if she’d had an opening to try and knock his hand loose she was certain he’d shoot her this time. When they reached the others he thrust her forward so harshly she fell. The mud squelched under her hands and knees, but a dozen hands reached out to catch her before she skidded far enough to land on her face. The stormtrooper who’d brought her stepped into place, completing the circle around them.  


The Arjaxi clung to each other, each hand connecting with a different individual. Only having two herself, Norah was gripped along her arms and shoulders as well, causing a bone-deep ache where she’d been hit. She kept silent, trying to find strength among the collective. It was comforting to know that they considered her enough of one of them to hold on to her at all. She could easily have been left on her own.  


Rivulets of water ran down the plastoid composite armour, pinging softly with every raindrop. Guns were levelled from every direction, but the stormtroopers didn’t fire. They didn’t move. They didn’t even speak. Dread built steadily with each passing moment, as Norah and the Arjaxi waited for something to happen. It didn’t take long before their clothing was soaked through, amplifying the chill from the wet ground, but the trembling came from fear.  


The shuttle opened then, and a black-cloaked figure descended the ramp. He was tall, with a hood covering a chrome-edged mask, and he strode with terrible purpose toward them. Norah felt her breath still in her chest as the man approached. He carried himself with barely contained energy, fists held tightly at his side, radiating danger and menace. Whoever he was, he was in charge, and it was up to him whether they survived this encounter or not.  


One of the stormtroopers turned crisply to the side to allow his leader into the circle. Speaking with the efficiency expected of the First Order, the trooper reported, “Fifteen captured, my lord. Fourteen locals and one human female.”  


_Fourteen?_ Norah thought. _Who got away?_  


She tried to look over the group, searching for familiar faces in the gloomy half-light, but without her goggles and having most of their backs to her it was difficult to identify who was who. If the troopers were correct in their count that meant three had gotten away but there was no way to tell which three it was.  


There was no more time to ponder which of her people had escaped as the black-cloaked figure was approaching the group. He crackled with power. The Arjaxi shrank before him, curling in on themselves to make smaller targets. It was an instinctive, animalian response, impossible to stop or repress. Much as she wanted to pretend she was unaffected by such things, Norah ducked her head and shifted to hide behind her muscular companions. He waded into the group, parting them wordlessly by the sheer force of his presence, heading straight to her.  


A gloved hand extended, reaching for her. The Arjaxi in front of Norah practically yanked her forward so the masked man would take her before he got closer. Her scarf shifted forward, sliding heavily down over her eyes, and she jerked it back without thinking, the animal hindbrain unwilling to be blinded so near a threat. The fabric caught on the stick in her hair, leaving most of her head covered, but as soon as her face was revealed the black-cloaked man froze. His hand snapped back to his side in an instant and he stopped coming forward. She glanced up at him, dropping her eyes again immediately so as not to trigger a response. He was taught as a bowstring, nearly vibrating with tension.  


“You’re not the one.” It was practically accusatory.  


The voice was like gravel, lava, hate. It scraped against her ears, making her flinch. The words didn’t register right away but once they did she risked another glance. He was staring at her behind the mask, eyes burning holes into her. She didn’t know what he was thinking but she knew this was the moment he would decide their fates. Disappointment didn’t bode well. He turned sharply, walking away from the group. Norah felt her heart, lodged firmly in her throat, beat tentatively. Either the stormtroopers would assemble neatly to follow, or in a moment they’d all be dead.  


“Sir, what should we do with the prisoners?” a trooper asked as he passed by.  


Norah stilled, not daring to breathe, waiting for the answer. The black-cloaked figure turned again, looking over the group. They had to be a sorry sight, on their knees, clinging together in the rain. He looked at the trooper and said, “Round them up. Take them for questioning.”  


The unexpected answer dropped her heart to her stomach. Questioning by the First Order meant torture followed by death. Everyone knew it. The Arjaxi began to break down, some crying out in fear, some merely crying. These were her men, she was responsible for them. They were her friends. This was wrong. No one was going to stop it unless someone did something. Norah pushed herself to her feet, forcing herself not to think about what she was doing. The black-cloaked man was already starting to walk away, the first stormtroopers beginning to close in.  


“What have we done?!” she shouted. “We haven’t done anything wrong!”  


The diggers shushed her, pulling at her hands to get her to sit back down, at least until the stormtroopers forced them all to their feet. She stood taller, not letting them stop her.  


“Answer me! What right do you have to do this?”  


She knew it was a mistake the moment the words left her lips. The black-cloaked man turned back, swiftly walking toward the group again. She shied, instinctively trying to make herself small again, but that wasn’t going to help here. Straightening her spine, she faced him defiantly. The worst they could do was kill her, and if they took her aboard their ships that was likely anyway. Maybe this way she could focus them on herself and, if she was very lucky, she could protect her men.  


The stormtroopers closed in, about to start grabbing people, but their leader waved them back. She lifted her chin, looking him as squarely in the face as she could given the mask, challenging him to answer her. If he respected her as the one in charge he might let her underlings go. That was all she could hope for.  


“’What right’? We are the First Order. That is all the right we need,” he stated, coming on like a hurricane. “What are you doing here?”  


“This- Archaelogical excavation,” she tripped over her words. He couldn’t know what she was really excavating, couldn’t know she was lying through her teeth. Pointing at the pit, she added, “We’ve unearthed an ancient Arjaxi facility. It’s local history - a forgotten site. That’s all.”  


“And it has nothing to do with the Jedi?”  


Her mind went blank as soon as he spat the word. How could he know? How could he have associated it with what they were doing?  


“Jedi?” she feigned ignorance, less than convincingly. She could swear there was a hint of a smile under the mask.  


“You were asking questions about the Jedi. About _forgotten sites._ The First Order has ears everywhere.”  


“They’re just my dig crew,” she said, dropping all pretense. “They didn’t even know what I was looking for. They had nothing to do with it.” She was certain he was smiling now. “Please, you don’t have to take them. They’re just local people, farmers. They’re not part of this.” She wasn’t sure what ‘this’ was, exactly, but there was only one chance to save the Arjaxi. He just had to see reason. They were innocent, simple laborers hired under false pretenses. She’d never mentioned the word Jedi to any of them, but she had used it in her first few days inquiring on the planet. She’d simplified her queries to ‘ruins’ by the time she and Ochada met. He had to understand that. “Please.”  


The black-cloaked man turned to the stormtrooper again. She took half a step forward, pulling against the Arjaxi hands trying to make her sit and be quiet. She was ready to go with them. She wouldn’t even fight. He looked at her once more, and said, “Take them all. Destroy the site.”  


“No!” she screamed as he walked away. “You can’t do this!”  


The stormtroopers moved forward en masse, pulling Arjaxi to their feet and pushing them toward the troop transport. Norah was still somewhat in the middle, protected momentarily as they grabbed people from the edges of the group.  


“Please, my droid is still down there! Let me just call it up! Please!” she shouted to the troopers. It was useless, of course, as they continued to grab and drag away members of the dig crew.  


Two stormtroopers broke away from the rest of the pack, walking toward the pit. Norah shouted in their direction, even as another trooper roughly took hold of her and began to pull her away.  


“My droid is down there! Please! You can call it up with any datapad! It’s got important information! Don’t blow up the temple!” she yelled, fighting against the grip on her arm. “Please! My droid!”  


The stormtrooper pulling her toward the transport jerked her off balance and let go of her arm for a moment, using her distraction to strike her with his weapon. The first blow caught her behind the knee, dropping her to the ground. Still, she tried to crawl toward the pit and the troopers lobbing active mines down the hole. The second blow caught her against the side of the head, knocking her senseless. She couldn’t fight as he gripped her wrist and dragged her over the muddy ground toward the transport. The world swam wildly, blurring the sight of the Arjaxi being shackled and loaded aboard the transport. Norah’s head lolled but she stayed conscious, trying to force her mouth to work. If the troopers refused to stop there was nothing she could do about it but maybe the droid would hear her. She’d told it to stay on the first level unless she called it up or someone came down. If the former, it could emerge. If the latter, hide.  


“A4! Come up! Come up now!” she tried, barely getting more than her regular speaking volume.  


The pit receded further as the trooper dragged her along, finally dropping her in a heap at the base of the ramp inside.  


“A4. Come up. They’re gonna blow it up.”  


Metal shackles clicked in place around her wrists and she was hauled mostly upright and carried into the ship. The others were already secured to the walls, refusing to look at her or anything but the floor. She didn’t notice, too focused on trying to make sense of the white blurs running toward her. The blurs turned into more stormtroopers as they entered the transport, the same ones who’d been tossing mines on top of her droid. Sudden clarity brought her head up, just in time to watch the plume of fire and dirt explode from the ground.  


“No!” she screamed, jerking against her restraints. “A4!”  


Norah looked over at the shuttle, still sitting beside the transport and just visible from where she’d been secured. He was standing on the ramp, watching her. She wanted to break her shackles and run at him. She could kill him for this. Somehow she knew he was fully aware of her thoughts on the matter.  


The ground lurched in an instant, shifting unwholesomely under the shuttle. Cracks ran from the former dig site in every direction, opening and sinking in rapid progression. The stormtroopers shouted in alarm, calling for the pilot to take off. Norah could just barely see the black-cloaked figure jerk to maintain his balance before turning and entering his shuttle. It was already lifting off the ground before he was fully inside, followed almost instantly by the transport. The hatch closed before the shuttle flew too far to see, but not before she watched the ground collapse in on itself, dropping again and again as the new weight collapsed more levels of the temple and the entire valley floor came apart in response. The resultant mudslide swallowed the entire campsite in an instant. What precious little had been left of the spires of the temple were gone. Everything was gone.


	8. Interrogation

### Interrogation

### Norah

The journey to the ship was brief. Within a few minutes Norah and the Arjaxi had gone from watching the entire valley implode to docking on the First Order vessel. The stormtroopers hustled their prisoners out with ruthless efficiency, pushing, shoving, and dragging the lot across a busy landing area. There were fighters and troop transports like the one they’d come in, and sleek shuttles for the important officers. Norah looked for one in particular, but either he hadn’t arrived yet or his unique shuttle had docked elsewhere.  


An officer in a crisp black uniform appeared from the crowd, heading straight toward them. She was middle-aged, her wiry, silver hair tied in a perfect bun. Lines that certainly hadn’t come from sweet smiles bracketed her mouth, and her back showed all the pliability of hardened durasteel. There would be no reasoning with a woman like this. Pleading and weakness would only spur her on. She was every part the perfect First Order interrogator.  


“Split them up. Each to their own detention cell,” she ordered sharply. “We start with her.”  


Norah stiffened in her captor’s grasp, but no amount of pulling or thrashing would loosen his grip and fighting him just made her head spin. Inexorably dragged after the officer, she couldn’t stop them from doing whatever they wanted, and what they wanted was going to hurt.  


The detention level was simply laid out, with evenly spaced cells running on either side of a wide hall. The Arjaxi were unceremoniously stuffed into them one at a time, disappearing into the darkness without a word. As a race they were physically strong, but too pacifistic to stand up to the oppression of a military force. Arjanaz had traded hands between warring powers during every single galactic conflict over the last thousand years without a single hint of resistance from the six-armed locals. The men she’d come to know so well were no different than their ancestors. They simply had no fight in them, only resignation.  


Norah knew it was hopeless but she wasn’t going to just give in. They were going to have to work to take her down. Faking compliance for a moment, as if the sight of the cells had cowed her, she walked along without resisting. The grip on her arm didn’t slacken. Giving him just long enough to think she was defeated, Norah waited to make her move. There would only be one chance. It wasn’t really a chance at all. She knew that even if she managed to break free there were other troopers behind her, dozens between her and the ships, and she probably wouldn’t be able to operate one of them even if she could get to it. It changed nothing.  


Lurching to the right, she slammed into the trooper, catching him just under the shoulder. He let go of her as they hit the wall, freeing her to smash her cuffs against his helmet. The plastoid armour crunched prettily against the metal, but didn’t crack. She wondered idly if she’d broken the trooper’s nose, hoping that she had, and turned to run back the way they’d come. A pair of troopers was already on top of her, knocking her into the wall, preventing her from escaping. She hadn’t even made it one step.  


She was dragged into the nearest cell in seconds, strapped to the interrogation chair, with a parting punch from one of the troopers. She thought it was the one whose nose she may have broken but it was impossible to tell them apart. Every set of white armour looked exactly the same to her. The steely-eyed officer followed the troopers into the cell.  


“Did you think you’d get away?”  


“No,” Norah replied honestly. “I just had to try.”  


“Your friends are being much more cooperative than you. They haven’t fought back. They haven’t even tried to talk their way out. It’s refreshing, in a way, having such easy prisoners. Not like you,” she said with a wolfish smile. “In all honesty I prefer the ones who fight. It’s more enjoyable to break them.”  


Part of Norah wanted to roll her eyes so far to the back of her head they stuck. The other part was truly terrified.  


“You are going to cooperate with us,” the officer began, circling the rack, occasionally reaching out to tug on the fabric of her scarf or to run a finger down her arm. “You are going to tell us what we want to know. You are going to be honest. When you are not honest I am going to hurt you. When I think you are not being honest I am going to hurt you. When you even think about not being honest I am going to hurt you. The more you lie to me the worse it will get and in the end you will still tell me everything. You can try to save yourself the pain, but I don’t think you’re capable.”  


It wasn’t possible to stop the shaking once it started. Norah was too afraid, too cold, too wet, too defenseless, too hopeless. This woman was eager to harm her, and she could do nothing to stop it from happening. She was utterly helpless.  


“If you turn out to be strong, and I doubt you are, we’ll give you a break from time to time. I will spend those breaks in the other rooms, hurting your friends. The more you lie to me the more I will hurt them. You can be as strong as you like. You can lie as much as you want. They will suffer for it.”  


“Don’t touch them,” Norah hissed.  


The officer laughed - a cold, harsh sound. Norah could have kicked herself for being so easy. She’d revealed her first weakness.  


“Or what? You’ll stop me?” the older woman asked, laughing again. “I think not. No, you’ll be here, strapped to your chair, writhing in pain. Let’s give you a taste of that pain to start.”  


She nodded to the technician at the back of the room. Norah had only gotten a glimpse of another officer as she was bundled into the rack. With the other person behind her she had no way to see what they were doing. She tensed up, trying to steel herself against what was coming. It didn’t start right away as she’d expected. They made her wait for it, keeping her uncertain, not knowing when the pain would begin. When she started to try to look behind her to see what was happening they struck.  


Fire. Her skin was on fire. Her whole body tensed around the pain. It was like nothing she’d ever felt, burning in lines through her back, her arms, legs, hands, feet. Arcs of pure, molten agony tore through her body. It went on forever. It was never going to end. She couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t beg them to stop and she would have if she could.  


When the pain finally ended seconds or years had passed. She sank down in her restraints, panting, sweating.  


“That was level 1. Let’s see how high you can go.”


	9. Accident

### Accident

### Kylo

Kylo Ren was not happy. The intelligence report had proved false, the girl asking about Jedi wasn’t the one he searched for at all. She was nothing like the scavenger girl, untrained but powerful with the Force, dangerous and unyielding. His fingers itched to trace the scar she’d left him, running over his face like a badge of shame. A reminder of his failure. His weakness. Anger swelled inside at the memory, at her and at himself. No, this girl was nothing like her. Like _Rey_.  


He’d wanted it to be her so badly. From the moment the little comms officer had told him about the sighting he’d been sure it was Rey. The First Order was expending an immense amount of power and influence to locate the errant scavenger. Agents on hundreds of worlds were watching constantly for any sign of her, or the traitorous former Stormtrooper she’d been travelling with, or the very specific Corellian YT model freighter she was flying - a ship he knew so very, very well.  


Kylo stalked through the ship, heading away from the holochamber where he’d reported to the Supreme Leader, informing him of the disappointing find on Arjanaz. There had been a mention of Jedi, but the sad hole in the ground was hardly the place Skywalker had gone to lick his wounds. Supreme Leader Snoke had been upset, but he was wise and understood that there would be false trails, bad intelligence. The old man couldn’t hide forever, and sooner or later Kylo would find him. And then the self-styled Knight would die and the Jedi would truly be destroyed.  


That didn’t change the fact that someone was going to be on the receiving end of his anger. Kylo wasn’t one to be made a fool of, and chasing halfway across the galaxy for a backwater thief scrabbling in the dirt for illicit Jedi relics was too pathetic not to warrant a harsh response. The lift descended quickly, dropping fast enough that he could feel it in the pit of his stomach. The mild sickening sensation fought for space with the rage that always burned inside him. The rage won. The rage always won.  


Something was wrong. He could tell from the moment the doors opened. It was in the attitude of the stormtroopers lining the hall. A subtle sense of fear or discomfort or unease altered their postures. It was almost indistinguishable, unseeable, but it was there and to him it was wildly apparent. There should have been nothing of the kind. These were loyal stormtroopers, trained from birth to understand the importance of order. People like these ‘archaeologists’ seeking out forbidden artifacts were a threat to order. Those threats had to be dealt with.  


The scream pierced the air, causing the stormtroopers to flinch. It was the sound of true agony, a wordless cry for mercy or death - whichever came first. It was a sound that shouldn’t have come for hours into the interrogation. Something was wrong.  


Her cell door was open, so that her screams could be heard by her comrades more easily. They would hear it and be afraid. In their fear they would be eager to talk to spare themselves experiencing what had caused that sound. Even had the door been tightly sealed there was no chance they wouldn’t have been able to hear her. Kylo closed in on the sound of her agony, approaching just as she fell silent. The sight that awaited nearly arrested his step. Even from the hall he could see the only reason she wasn’t screaming now was because they were hitting her again, pouring undiluted pain straight into her nervous system. She pushed against her bindings, bleeding where she’d already rubbed the skin raw, head thrown back against the sensations racking her body. They could only have started a short while before. Water was still dripping from her clothing to puddle on the floor. There was no reason why she should already be in this state.  


The charge ended, dropping her in the rack so that only the restraints held her in place. She was shuddering, weeping silently as she tried to catch her breath. Tremors rippled from her head to her toes, aftershocks from the pain induction. It took her a moment to draw herself together enough to breathe deeply. That’s when the scream came. There were flecks of blood on her lips, and from the sound of her voice he would guess she was in the process of shredding her own vocal cords.  


Kylo shot a look to the officers at the back of the room. The technician was pale, slightly green tinged around the edges, looking as if his own nerves were fraying. The senior officer, Captain Coratis, one of the Order’s best interrogators, licked her lips in pleasure. She signalled to her technician to begin again. The younger man looked askance at her, but didn’t dare defy the order. He pressed the command trigger, sending another wave of agony to the prisoner. They didn’t even try to give her enough time to speak.  


Her body tightened, straining against the interrogation chair, the restraints, even itself. She was tearing herself apart to try and escape the pain. An alarm flared on the console, the screen going red, before a spark of electricity visibly shot from the rack, surging back down into the woman it held. The previous struggle looked like child’s play compared to this. She thrashed, eyes white and terrified, trying to pull her body away from the conduit. Kylo was there in an instant, red lightsaber flaring to life before he could think. It was easy to slice through the chair, harder to do it without cutting her. A security alarm blared to life, sensing the sudden malfunction - not because it had tried to electrocute the girl, but because it had gone offline.  


He tore her free of the rack, ordering the technician to summon a medical unit. She was unconscious, which seemed a good thing given the state of her. Just from what he could see her arm was at a strange angle, and marked red lines flowed down her fingers. The long sleeves hid any more of the damage, but a blackened scorch mark near her shoulder lined up with the inductor placement on the chair. It wasn’t possible to check her pulse or breathing through the thick material of his gloves, but the Force allowed him to search for signs of life in other ways. Unconscious, her mind was closed to him, but he could feel the erratic heartbeat and the deep, slow breaths. She was alive, for now.  


The medical team was posted at the end of the hall, in case an interrogation went too far and the prisoner needed patching up to continue, but nothing to this extent had ever happened before. At least, not by accident. Reluctantly handing her off to them as they sought out vital signs and hustled away to the surgery, Kylo turned his attention to the interrogation team. The junior officer clung to the wall near the door. He’d attached himself there after leading the medics in, as if proximity to an escape route might save him. Coratis stood near the flashing red console, head arrogantly high, arms straight at her sides as if on review.  


“What happened?”  


“We were interrogating the prisoner, my lord,” she replied unapologetically.  


“I can see that. What happened?”  


The technician ventured a timid, “The equipment malfunctioned, sir.”  


Kylo turned on him sharply, pleased to see the man shrink. He kept his voice even and cold, tightly holding back the rage that seethed inside, “The equipment malfunctioned _after_ you did something wrong.”  


“My lord Ren, we followed proper protocol in all respects,” Coratis stated, boldly redirecting his attention back to herself. “The prisoner was properly restrained, indicated for first questioning, interrogated in the mandated order with no deviation. There was no hold on her questioning. If you had wanted us to wait for you a hold order should have been issued.”  


She dared. She dared to speak to him like that. He lashed out, raising his hand and pulling her forward by the throat. The Force hold was shockingly strong, sweeping her across the space in the blink of an eye, letting her feel her mortality as he wrapped his physical hand around her neck. Her strength was in her personality, her methods, but physically she was quite slight. He lifted her with ease, holding her inches above the floor. Her hands wrapped around his automatically, trying to claw her way to oxygen, so he squeezed a little tighter, watching her warm, brown skin take on a distinctly red hue.  


“Know your place,” he growled, throwing her across the room to crash into the console. “I will be sending a team to investigate the malfunction that occurred under your watch. Whatever they find, you will be held accountable for what happened here.”


	10. Examination

### Examination

### Kylo

Kylo stood before the assembled remains of the prisoner’s belongings. Her name had been hastily scrawled on the clear bag with her identification number after the other prisoners gave it up. The fact that she, herself, had not even said as much was interesting to him. A prisoner who refused to speak during an interrogation was usually a prisoner with training in withstanding interrogations. That meant military, intelligence, or insurgency. If she was working for the Republic or the Resistance there should be some clue here. He’d already pulled her Galactic Registry files. There wasn’t much to see - the earliest documentation he could find for her was only five years old, when one Norah Voss had arrived on Coruscant. No planet of origin was noted. She simply showed up on the old capital world as if she blinked into existence there. That, in and of itself, usually indicated someone up to no good.  


Pouring out the lot onto a table, he sifted through her meager possessions hoping for answers. The bulk of the items were clothing. The silky, olive green drapery from her shirt, shredded to pieces by the surgeons in the medbay, was quickly lifted and examined. Blackened scorch marks attesting to the power overload were dispersed among three separate sections cut apart to give the medical team access to the injury. Running a piece of the material through gloved fingers, he felt a momentary urge to remove his covering and touch it with his bare hands.  


He did not give in to the impulse.  


Everything had already been assessed by technicians, scanned, catalogued, processed. Some had been taken from her in the shuttle, before the lot of prisoners had even reached the _Finalizer_ , the rest by the trauma team. Elsewhere on the ship, similar piles from each of the local natives were being examined by others, but he was only interested in her things. There was nothing special about any of it. Cheap electronics dominated the mess, and the tough, hardy materials suitable for whatever ‘excavation’ she’d been performing on the planet were largely functional, if dusty. The primary exceptions were a number of cracked lights on the banded headlamp where a stormtrooper struck her. The rest could be disposed of when he was finished with them.  


Lifting and disregarding her clothing - including the mud-stained, blood-tinged scarf - he found a few small items of a more personal nature. There were half a dozen rings of various shapes and sizes; a few earrings; a long silvery chain with a pendant shaped like a planet; an antique hair decoration, the curved half of which had shattered into a number of pieces from her thrashing during the interrogation, though the metal fastener had survived intact. He wondered at the lack of bracelets, given the rest of it. Apparently this was a woman who enjoyed adornments. The jewelry contrasted sharply with the tough, plain pants and boots, but somehow not with the shirt. There was a mix of practicality and luxury to her belongings, an undercurrent of vanity contrasted with function. It didn’t strike him as the apparel of a soldier or a spy. It was almost intriguing.  


Looking at the lot, it was hard not to regret the impulsiveness of his decision to destroy the dig site. Goggles and worklights were all well and good, but there was nothing to indicate how she’d found the place to begin with or what she’d discovered there. If it had been a mere local ruin the site was irrelevant but the word _Jedi_ haunted him. What if it was the key to finding Skywalker - to tracking the old man to his hiding place, and finally ending their long conflict? Certainly the so-called Knight - he could not think of him as ‘Uncle’ - was holed up among the ruins of his broken sect, clinging to ancient history better forgotten. It was just a matter of finding the right ruins, the right lair, and Kylo could finish what his grandfather had started. He could be the one to finally eradicate the Jedi.  


Not for the first time, he reached out for his grandfather’s presence. Since the destruction of Starkiller Base it had been harder and harder to feel him. Even the twisted visage from the cherished helmet didn’t seem to call him as it once had. Not for the first time, Kylo wondered if his failure that day had disappointed the spirit, if it sensed his weakness and no longer chose the association with its descendant. He’d felt the disconnection from the moment the lightsaber had struck home, cutting through Han Solo’s - _Father’s_ \- chest…  


It was not the only loss from that day that caused him pain.  


_Rey._  


Their fight had wounded him deeply. It hadn’t just been the physical damaged she’d inflicted with her wild, untrained swings of the lightsaber - his grandfather’s lightsaber. He’d been easy on her, too easy in the end, and he’d failed to capture her. Failed to sway her. Failed even to win against her. Hux had taken particular delight in that - the powerful Kylo Ren, felled by a mere scavenger girl. The rest didn’t matter, the hows and whys, the blood in the snow as he’d tracked the pair through the forest, her surprising grasp on the Force, the planet breaking up beneath their feet, the agony of the shot from the bowcaster, the pain of knowing who’d fired it, and the reason why-  


Somehow his idle thoughts always seemed to drift to the idea of confronting her again, paying her back for his injuries, showing her that her little victory was a fluke that only came from the extreme trauma he’d already suffered. It had nothing to do with her. In a true fight, when he was at his strongest and was actually trying to win, he would destroy her.  


Then there were the other type of scenarios - of getting another chance to try and persuade her to see what he could offer, having her see that the teachings of the Jedi were weakness, that Luke Skywalker was a decrepit old man who could never give her what he could. Those imaginings always ended the same way - with her capitulation to the inevitable.  


Shaking himself, Kylo returned to the present. It did not do to dwell. It was weakness. Weakness was not the way of the Dark Side. Weakness led to failure and he could not afford another. The Supreme Leader had been incredibly patient with him, more than he deserved, but that was all the more reason to focus on his work. He had to prove the Supreme Leader’s faith in him justified. He had to live up to his master’s expectation. To his grandfather’s legacy. There was too much at stake to waver.  


This girl - not the one who’d left her marks burned into him to remind him why sentiment was poison - this new girl could be the key. She’d connected the Jedi to this planet, in a tiny pocket of the Core all but irrelevant by galactic standards. There had to be a reason she’d come, speaking the hated word, searching for their echoes. Something had to have led her there. He couldn’t ask her at the moment - the interrogator’s stupidity had seen to that - but when she woke…  


He would use her to find them. He could sense it. There was a certainty inside him, the Force allowing him a glimpse into the future.  


This Norah Voss was the key.

But only if she wasn’t already working for his enemies.  


A chime at his door surprised him. He’d been so invested in his own thoughts he hadn’t felt the presence approaching. Reaching out now - lightly brushing the thoughts of the man on the other side of the door - he could feel the thrum of fear, dread for his potential reaction to the news, but it was more subdued than the usual levels of those who came to his quarters. The man outside had done this before. He hoped that prior experience would carry him through. As he’d been tasked to discover the reason for the ‘accident’ in the interrogation room, Captain Beko had neither good nor bad news to deliver, simply information. With cold facts there was no way to predict how Ren would react.  


Kylo’s mouth twitched in amusement at the officer’s thoughts as he drew the persona of the terrifying, unpredictable Dark Lord around himself. Even with familiarity it didn’t do for those around him to lose their fear. The door slid open at his command, revealing a stern-looking officer approaching his middle years.  


“Lord Ren,” Beko greeted respectfully, a few silver threads glinting in his black hair as he stepped forward and extended a datapad. “We’ve completed our assessment, as you ordered.”  


“And what have you found, Captain?”  


“The prisoner was behaving disruptively as she was being escorted to her cell. In order to subdue her, the stormtroopers handling her put her in the nearest cell at the time. It was the wrong room.”  


“What does her cell number have to do with the malfunction?”  


“The cell she was placed in had been prepared for one of the natives, my lord. Their anatomy is significantly different than that of a human. Their nervous systems, specifically, do not carry electrical impulse as cleanly as ours. The interrogation equipment was set to a more powerful baseline to compensate for the difference, causing the inductor to begin at a much higher level than it otherwise would have.”  


“Equivalent to what?” Kylo asked, already guessing the answer.  


“Equivalent to beginning on a Level 30, more or less,” the officer pronounced, disapproval evident in his almond-shaped eyes.  


“30?” he mused, thinking back to the sound of sheer agony - to the scream of a person begging for death. “When was the last time an interrogation required Level 30?”  


“I don’t believe it ever has on this ship, sir. Even the political prisoner, Poe Dameron, was only brought to Level 23 before he broke.”  


Unseen behind his mask, Kylo canted an eyebrow. The official interrogators only brought him to 23, but the pressure applied through the Force was quite different. Still, Dameron couldn’t have been far from the level of pain the girl had been subjected to. Possibly even less intense than what the girl had experienced, and still she hadn’t given so much as her name. The memory of Coratis’s evident pleasure in her pain intruded, making him wonder if she’d even given the prisoner a chance to speak.  


“And, as I said, that was where they _began_ with her,” Beko continued. “By the time the chair malfunctioned they were closer to Level 40.”  


_40? Amazing she survived at all,_ he thought.  


“And the shock? The near-electrocution?”  


“We believe it was a combination of factors, my lord. The prisoner’s skin and clothing were soaked with water, allowing for greater disbursal of the electrical charge, but the malfunction itself was caused both by an overload due to the faulty settings and what appeared to be a loose connection within the chair itself.”  


“Could it have been prepared for?”  


“No, my lord. There was no way for Captain Coratis to have anticipated the equipment failing in that way, however it is my official opinion that the loose connection itself would not have caused the failure. Her overzealous methods and inability to identify the incorrect settings led directly to the overload. My report reflects this finding,” Beko stated, nodding toward the datapad.  


Kylo dismissed the officer and glanced over the write-up. Already his expectations were changing, shifting to incorporate the new information. If the questioning had begun at an appropriate level it likely would have proceeded as usual, but to begin with such high settings was different. He remembered the minute span between one charge and the next. Neither Coratis nor her assistant had spoken to the prisoner. No question had been asked or order given.  


_Was it possible they didn’t ask anything of her at all? Even her name?_  


If that was the case, it changed things completely. No training to resist was needed if the interrogator never actually asked a question, and from what he knew of the officer it was entirely possible that was exactly what had occurred. The captain had quite the reputation for pushing harsher techniques than required. More than one complaint had been filed regarding her overzealous methods. There had been multiple cases of prisoners damaged beyond expectation under her care. Usually the information she extracted was good enough that the hierarchy overlooked what was understood but not talked about, but if her sadistic impulses were responsible for endangering Kylo’s primary mission there could be no amnesty.  


Hux wouldn’t take it well if he simply had his premiere interrogator executed, but for a failure of this magnitude it would be warranted. Nodding at the course of his thoughts, he made his decision. Coratis was in holding, awaiting the official report and the resultant disciplinary measures. It was likely she thought she would be excused for the mistake and allowed to go back to her work on the other prisoners without real consequences. It wouldn’t be the first time. But if he was right about the girl’s fate being tied to finding Skywalker then Coratis had endangered the work of the First Order with her stupidity. That would not be permitted. That _must_ be punished.  


_She should know the pain of her actions._  


However, there was something to attend to first.


	11. Diagnosis

### Diagnosis

### Kylo  


The medbay was sterile, cold, soulless. Kylo Ren stood in the center of the room, sharply outlined against the pale wall fixtures and recovery beds. A nurse stepped around him, careful not to acknowledge his presence, as she made her way to the bedside of one of her patients. The stormtrooper was one of a handful scattered around the facility. Like most of the others in the room his injuries were fairly minor, training mishaps or maintenance failures, nothing terribly serious. Being in the presence of the Supreme Leader’s infamous enforcer had caused his heart rate to spike, alerting and summoning the nurse. Their fear amused him.  


Colonel Corddray strode forward, directly to Kylo’s side. He was an older man, a former Imperial surgeon in the final years of the Empire, still as loyal now as he had been then, and one of the few people who’d seen Kylo at his weakest and most damaged. It had been the _Finalizer_ that transported him away from Starkiller Base. The doctor had been the one to work on him, which at times led to an unfortunate sense of over-familiarity. Now he was responsible for the prisoner’s care.  


“There was no need for you to come all the way down here, my lord. We could have sent the report to you.”  


“I am here, now. Take me to her.”  


The colonel nodded, overhead lights catching the hints of pink skin between his thinning hair. Leading the way through the ward, bypassing the recovery area for the other minor issues, he headed straight to the major traumas. There was more of a sense of urgency here, more awareness of the precarious balance between recovery and failure, more of a quiet expectation of death. The pair walked to a viewing window, looking in on the patient in question.  


Kylo had barely gotten a good look at her on the planet, little more than the disappointing moment where it became clear she wasn’t the scavenger he sought, and between the harsh red sunlight and the rain it hadn’t been much to see. The wrong face looking up at him from beneath a sodden swatch of fabric was all he’d really needed to dismiss her. In the interrogation room she’d been so wracked with pain her features were unrecognizable in comparison to the woman on the recovery bed in front of him. And woman she was - not a girl at all - close to his own age at a guess. There was none of the wiry strength of the other, of Rey. Instead she was soft, all curves and gentle lines. She looked like a pampered pet, the kind who’d never labored honestly a day in their life, yet she’d been the one overseeing the dig site, working hands-on with the locals, fighting back hard enough that the stormtroopers had confined her in the nearest cell to hand, not giving in even after experiencing a truly incredible amount of pain. The other prisoners been so eager to talk after hearing her screams it had almost been difficult to get them to stop, and each of them had confirmed the same thing: she’d come from off-world looking for cheap labor, she’d known there was a ruin but not precisely where, she’d never told any of them why she wanted to dig it out, and her droid had been inside the temple - and they all used the word ‘temple’ - when it had been destroyed.  


Unconscious she was just like a doll, or a corpse. Her body lay beneath the thin sheet as if were a shroud. There was none of the force of personality, or stupidity, of the woman who’d challenged him on the planet’s surface and resisted the troopers on the ship. There was no life to her at all, lying broken and still in the medbay. She was incredibly pale, nearly matching the bandages covering her from shoulder to wrist. Her lips looked bloodless in the harsh hospital light. The only colour to her was the hair he hadn’t seen until now. It had been hidden beneath the scarf before, but here it poured over the pillow and off the edge of the bed, a spill of thick curls as red as blood.  


“The pain inductor overloaded. Your investigator team informed us as soon as they confirmed it,” the colonel started. “It nearly electrocuted her. Two of the induction points formed a circuit from her shoulder to her wrist. She has severe burns at both points and following the path of the electricity. We removed the worst of the damaged tissue but most of it appears recoverable. The regeneration serum will do its best on those. She will have scarring but with physical therapy and time she may regain full use. You know how well the serum works for burns.”  


Kylo stiffened at the reference, but said nothing.  


“There’s muscle and ligament damage, both from the electricity and from her fighting to get away from the nerve induction pain. She dislocated her shoulder trying to escape the inductors. She’s lucky it dislocated when it did, or she’d have torn the whole joint apart. That would have been much more work to fix. The muscle damage in her chest is worse. We’ll have to wait to see how much the serum can repair, but she’ll develop scar tissue there as well. She will likely need to have some reconstructive surgeries along the line. There was also a minor concussion, but I don’t think that was from the interrogation. From what I hear she struggled on the planet as well and one of the stormtroopers struck her in the head.”  


“So much damage?”  


“In fact, she’s very lucky. Even soaking wet, the energy only went down her arm. If it had crossed through her chest it could have destroyed major organs, stopped her heart. It very likely would have killed her. Unfortunately, that’s not even the worst of what injuries she did receive. The shoulder and the muscle will heal, more or less, and so will the burns. As long as there is no infection I’m confident she’ll recover fairly well from that. It’s the nerves that will be the problem.”  


“What about them?”  


“The serum doesn’t work on them. It never has. Bacta would fix it, but it’s expensive and rare, especially with the conflict, and the Order doesn’t want to pay the cost when the regeneration serum is cheaper and easier to produce. They still think of stormtroopers as expendable clones - an unfortunate holdover from the early days of the Empire,” the doctor said with a sigh. To anyone else that statement might have bordered on disloyalty, but Kylo knew how much Corddray had loved the Empire and how loyal he was the First Order. He was one of the privileged few who’d had the honor of serving with Darth Vader himself.  


“If we had a Bacta tank…” Corddray shook his head and continued, “But we don’t. The regeneration serum only helps the body do what it already would have done to heal, only much more quickly. Nerves don’t regenerate, and the electrical shock… It burned them out. I can’t say how much damage was done yet, but I would almost guarantee it will be substantial. There are also a host of other problems that follow this kind of injury - pain, weakness, tingling, sensory misfires, neurological issues, personality changes. She could have memory problems, even develop cataracts. It could happen tomorrow or it could happen years from now. Electrical injuries are difficult that way. Blaster fire is much simpler.”  


“We have no access to the aid she needs?” Kylo demanded, concerned by the possibility of ‘memory problems’.  


“She’s just a prisoner. If it were yourself, or one of the other senior officers, I could possibly arrange it on one of the larger bases, but for her? No one would authorize it.”  


Kylo bristled, drawing himself up to his full height, putting out the aura of intimidation. “And if I authorized it?”  


“I would do my best, my lord,” the doctor replied, quickly shifting attitudes. “But there would have to be approval from the other end as well. No one from Central Command would grant the request. It took time to provide even you with the Bacta you needed after Star-”  


“I remember,” he cut in sharply, biting out the words.  


“If it is your order, I will, of course, comply.”  


He looked through the window again, seeing the deathly pale face and the violently sanguine hair.  


_Another failure. More weakness.  
_

“No. She’s just a prisoner. The serum will do.”  


“Yes, my lord.”  


“How long until I can question her myself?”  


“It’s not certain how long before she regains consciousness,” the doctor hedged, “and once she does she might not be all there for some time-”  


“Inform me when she wakes,” he interrupted, putting his back to the window.  


Clenching his fist, Kylo fought down the desire to take out his frustration on the walls with his lightsaber. A comms terminal or other replaceable piece of equipment was an acceptable target, but the medbay was simply too delicate. Pushing down the rage, he made his way to the hall. If there were memory problems resulting from the overload it might not be possible to find out how she located the Arjanaz site, or what else she knew about Jedi. It could mean a missed opportunity to find Skywalker. Nothing among her personal effects explained how she’d found the place, let alone what she’d dug out of it. If her memory had been damaged, there was only one place that information could still reside. It was unlikely the droid she’d been travelling with had survived the temple’s collapse, but if it had it would contain the information. There would only be one way to find out about that.  


Self-recriminations about his spur-of-the-moment decision to destroy the building rang in his head, but he wasn’t the one to blame for the damage to the prisoner. There would be a reckoning for this. Coratis would be held accountable for her mistake, regardless of Hux’s feelings on the matter.


	12. Power Struggle

### Power Struggle

### Kylo  


The bridge officers carried on their duties as usual, unaware of the power struggle occurring among the command crew. Not for the first time, Kylo resented being forced to deal with the oft-loathed and only sometimes-respected Hux. The ginger-haired general looked down his nose at the dark lord, impressive given their shared height, and dismissed the proposed venture.  


“You’ve already destroyed the site and now you want to waste our time excavating it again yourself?” Hux sniped. “The Supreme Leader doesn’t enjoy having his resources thrown away for no reason, especially when it’s your own foolishness that cost us the temple. I have no intention of wasting any more time orbiting this pathetic, insignificant world - let alone fixing your mistakes.”  


Kylo bristled, feeling his rage flare to life. There were times when he respected the man, appreciated his loyalty and devotion to the First Order and the Supreme Leader. But this was going too far. This pompous ass thought he could speak that way to him? General or not, he could strangle as easily as any other man. Kylo’s fingers twitched at the thought, aching to summon the Force and wrap it around Hux’s throat. He’d seen the archival footage from the Empire’s records. He’d watched even high-ranking officers crumple and die at the invisible hand of Darth Vader. It wouldn’t be difficult to find another to replace Hux. Generals were easy enough to come by.  


But the Supreme Leader would be displeased. He’d been very clear about the limits where Hux was concerned. The unsaid truth of the general’s role as Kylo’s constant observer was just as clear. He was forbidden to cross that line, and so he allowed the glassy-eyed officer to rant and to overstep. For now.  


“It was your interrogator who mismanaged the questioning. Norah Voss came to Arjanaz looking for Jedi for a reason. With her incapacitated we have no way of knowing what brought her here, what resources she has access to, who she is working with, or what she found. That temple may well have contained information that could lead us to Skywalker. The only thing her workers can tell us is her name and that she had a droid that was still in the temple, but nothing of her origins. Coratis’s eagerness to cause pain jeopardizes our ability to complete our mission.”  


“Coratis does her work as instructed, something _others_ might take note of. So, shall we tell Leader Snoke together that you’ve decided the valley you imploded had something of worth?” Hux snapped, unaware of his proximity to death. “That you wish to keep the flagship of the Order tied to this worthless rock for however long it takes to recover whatever scraps lie at the bottom of a hundred meters of mud?”  


The slight shift in position from the officer opposite him caught his attention. Her mirror-bright armour reflected a warped version of the command crew, broadcasting every adjustment in form. In the battlefield it wouldn’t truly matter, because if Phasma had taken the field it meant massive, devastating movement by squadrons of hardened soldiers, not the subtlety of First Order Command politics. Her impressively tall, chromium-bound form was a beacon to her men, a rallying point of sorts. In briefings like these, however, it worked to her disadvantage, as evidenced by Hux turning toward the flash of movement.  


“Captain, how would you like to spend your men in digging up this lost temple to get some wayward droid? Do you have any disciplinary cases, perhaps, who can be put to good use shovelling?” the general sneered.  


“My men can always use physical exertion, in whatever way they are needed. However, if these locals are so adept at digging, why don’t we simply gather them up and have them perform the task? A soldier is better suited to holding a weapon than a shovel.”  


Kylo almost smiled at her reply. The captain might not look suited to politics but she was adept at them. There was a reason she’d risen so high so fast, and it wasn't simply due to connections at high levels of power, which was more than the general could say. Unlike his ambivalent feelings toward Hux, he never had anything less than respect for Phasma.  


“Well,” Hux sputtered, surprised by her apparent willingness to assist wherever requested, “I agree they are better suited to holding weapons. Weapons that should be turned against the Resistance and the dregs of the New Republic!” Regaining his certainty as he went on, the wild-eyed general spat invectives against the ‘enemies of order’. “The scrabbling dogs don’t even know to give up, that they have lost, that order has prevailed! They continue to harry us, as if their insignificant fleet can damage the might of the First Order!”  


Exchanging a glance with Phasma, both protected by their respective masks, Kylo remembered the damage the Resistance’s ‘insignificant fleet’ had done to Starkiller Base. It seemed she understood the absurdity of the statement as well. Phasma, too, carried the shame of defeat on that shattered site. Hux denied even awareness of his failure. While Kylo had fallen against the raw might of Rey’s burgeoning abilities with the Force and the damage inflicted by a bowcaster strike, Phasma had been captured and ignominiously tossed into a garbage compactor by the rogue stormtrooper FN-2187 - _Finn_ as he now called himself, the late Han Solo, and the Wookie, Chewbacca. She’d been very fortunate to be retrieved before the planet exploded, or before the compactor’s crush-plates compressed her to nothing more than a broken body in shards of shiny armour. He knew the story that had prompted the idea well. He’d heard it a thousand times - of the Death Star circling the remains of Alderaan, the rescue of the beautiful, angry princess, the stormtroopers closing in, the three people who’d dived into a garbage chute to escape.  


Unbidden, more memories rose to the surface - the rough sound of the voice regaling him with stories of adventures and narrow escapes and the mysteries of a Force the speaker never truly understood. The imagined picture of battles fought before his birth, of the terrifying Sith Lord who brought worlds to their knees with his power. Images came of the great, shaggy-haired Chewbacca towering over him, lifting him in the air and trilling in his native tongue, drawing peals of laughter from the boy he’d once been. The boy who was dead. It was difficult to push away the sound of agony in the Wookie’s roar as Solo - as _Father_ \- fell, speared on the crimson blade of Kylo’s lightsaber, before Chewbacca fired the bolt that had burned into him, spilling his blood over the snow that covered Starkiller Base. The scar twinged as he adjusted his posture, reminding him again of that moment. It seemed everything revolved around the past.  


Phasma turned away, the chrome armour catching his eye and dragging him back to the moment. Hux continued to rant, now rambling about his disagreement with the suggestion that his lead interrogator should be subjected to her own methods as punishment for the ‘incident with the prisoner’. He gesticulated wildly, stabbing movements from his long, white hands emphasizing points, wound up too far to regain his usual poise and control. The general seemed to take Kylo’s silence as equal parts cowed agreement and insolence, unable to know the truth of the rambling thoughts that ran over him or his fight to get them under control once more.  


“You somehow seem to think a mere prisoner, this pathetic girl illegally excavating _nothing_ on some forgotten planet is worth risking damage to the best interrogator in this fleet! There are none better who serve outside of the Command bases, but you would damage her for what? To stroke your ego? Do you think the Supreme Leader would be pleased to hear of your lack of judgment in this, Ren?”  


Standing abruptly, Kylo was pleased to see Hux step back sharply. A touch of fear glinted in the depths of his bright eyes, nearly obscured by the intensity of his fervor.  


“You may report to the Supreme Leader whatever you like. I will be informing him that your _prized interrogator_ nearly destroyed our chance to find the last Jedi, perhaps even to locate the Resistance, and that you value _her_ more than the will of the Order.”  


Scoffing, Hux replied, “He would never believe such lies.”  


“The prisoner found a world the Empire never located, that the Jedi themselves forgot. If she can do that once, she can do it again. Given that she couldn’t have found it on her own, she likely has ties to the Resistance. Ties that can be exploited.”  


The statement seemed to temporarily stun the general as he ran it over and over in his mind, trying to find a weakness in the logic. It was a smokescreen - one hastily constructed but dense enough to serve his purpose. Since he’d received the report on the interrogation Kylo had become certain she wasn’t part of the Resistance at all. Even through their brief interaction on the planet it seemed she lacked their brand of aggression, their determination, their idealism. From what the other prisoners had said about her he doubted she worked with anyone else at all, but Hux wouldn’t be so likely to let go on this if he didn’t think there was a chance of going after the larger prize.  


“Of course, that’s assuming that her mind survived the incompetence of your interrogator,” Kylo snapped as he turned and strode purposefully toward the door. “The interrogator you refuse to hold accountable. I wonder how the Supreme Leader would take that fact.”  


Hux sputtered angrily at his back, demanding he return to his place at the table, that the meeting was not over. Phasma remained carefully silent and still so as not to attract the attention of either man, simply unwilling to take part in their struggle for power if it didn’t benefit herself.  


Speaking over his shoulder, Kylo added, “Do with Coratis as you like, General. She belongs to you. The prisoner, however, falls under _my_ jurisdiction. I will deal with her. You may tell the Supreme Leader you attempted to interfere with our locating Skywalker if you like, but I think we can both agree that he would prefer it if we worked together. For the good of the Order.”  


Invoking the Order worked as expected. Hux was angry at being stepped over, his white skin turning mottled red, but his loyalty knew no bounds. Their rivalry allowed for moments like this, where one gained a temporary advantage over the other, but so long as they both worked for the benefit of the Supreme Leader and the First Order neither could truly work against the other. They could become heated in their conflicts, but both knew they worked toward something greater than themselves.  


Nodding to dismiss Ren, Hux turned his back. Hiding a half-smile behind his mask, Kylo walked away. Hux would convince himself that he’d won in time. Kylo didn’t even have to do the work himself. The general would take care of it for him. The threat of being seen by the Supreme Leader as protecting an incompetent officer who endangered their work would convince him to deal with Coratis himself. It wouldn’t be as bad for her as it would be if Kylo were issuing the punishment, but it would be painful nonetheless. It was a victory all around.


	13. Awakening

### Awakening

### Norah  


The lights burned her eyes. Everything was blurry, hazy, but the lights were pure, brilliant white. She groaned, trying to lift her lead-filled hand to cover her face. Sharp, sudden pain ran up her arm, through her shoulder, settling in her chest. It felt like a mountain had landed there, its peak stabbing her through the heart, with a broken crag pouring molten lava into the wound. Her gasp at the pain sent another wave tearing through her chest. Her body was nothing but pain from head to toe, but almost all of it was buried under her ribs.  


_My heart- My heart is burning. I can’t breathe!_  


A high-pitched noise jabbed her ears repeatedly, lancing more pain through the sensitive tissue behind her eyes and at the base of her skull simultaneously. Her left arm wasn’t as heavy as the right, and moving it hurt less - though it still ached. She managed to get it near her waist, trying to push herself upright. The fire exploded, tearing through her, an inferno of agony. If it hadn’t hurt so much to breathe she’d have screamed.  


A tall, blonde nurse, identifiable by his pale teal uniform, appeared at her side. He brusquely adjusted the position of her arm, not caring about the look of desperation in her eyes or the pain he caused with his rough ministrations. She couldn’t speak to beg him to stop, to help her, to make the pain stop. All she could manage was a keening whimper like some dying animal.  


“Major Mizar,” he called over her head, summoning a doctor, “The prisoner is awake again.”  


_Again? No. I haven’t been here before. Wait, ‘prisoner’?_  


A stocky, dark-haired woman approached from the other side. Her eyes had no warmth in them, no kindness. It reminded Norah of someone else, someone cold and cruel, but she couldn’t quite remember who.  


“Up again, are you?” the doctor asked, digging her fingers into Norah’s face and shining a brighter light in her eyes than the one overhead. “Are you going to stay with us this time?”  


Cocking her head slightly in the wake of Norah’s confused expression, she added, “You’ve been waking up every few hours for the past two days. Never long enough for anyone to get anything out of you. Can you speak?”  


_Two days? How long have I been here? Where is ‘here’?_  


Trying to voice her thoughts proved impossible. Her lips were cracked and dry, her mouth worse. Sensing her distress, the nurse jammed the siptube of a waterpack through her lips and squeezed it, flooding her mouth before she could swallow. Choking made her cough, and coughing made her want to die as pain flared anew. The sharp stabbing of each movement preceded a slow burn that covered her, each form of pain compounding upon each other with every minute adjustment of her body. By the time she’d swallowed enough water to breathe she was made of fire.  


“I can do something for the pain but you have to do something for me first,” Mizar said, standing still and watching her struggle. “I need your name and I need to know what you were doing on the planet.”  


_The planet. Arjanaz. The temple._  


They were trying to dig out the temple. She could remember the days tracking through the red-black fields, hours and hours of shovelling ruddy soil, the camaraderie of her men. The excitement of watching the roof-section slowly draw up through the shaft they’d dug, and the enticing black of the chamber beneath. The swirling carvings. The mural.  


_The Jedi._  


Norah’s eyes widened, remembering what she’d been looking for, what hid within the temple. She’d been captured. She could remember it now, the stormtroopers swarming the camp, rounding up the team. The explosion, and A4, and the man in black. Then nothing. Something bad had happened, something that burned across her body, but she didn’t remember the particulars of what they’d done to her. That was probably for the best, judging by the pain. But had they found it? Automatically reaching for the globe pendant and the secret storage device it contained tore her breath out of her body.  


She looked anew at the uniforms of the medical personnel on either side of her. In and of themselves they weren’t particularly threatening, the colour was even a soothing blue-green, but now she could see the hallmarks in the cut of the fabric, the spiked circular design on the arm. They were part of it. She was still in the custody of the First Order.  


“Well,” Mizar demanded. “Your name? Do you want me to stop the pain or not?”  


The nurse ever-so-helpfully jostled the bed, “accidentally” pulling her hair - her _uncovered_ hair - sending a fresh rush of agony through her.  


_Anything. Anything to stop the pain._  


“Voss,” she whispered, attempting to force sound out of her achingly dry throat.  


The hiss of air barely carried the word, failing to impress the stone-faced doctor. She looked at the nurse, who stood by ready to assist with another tug at any time. “Alert Lord Ren.”


	14. Questioning

### Questioning

### Kylo

Her eyes were shut tight, but tear tracks running from the corners into her scarlet hair told the truth. She was awake. Kylo watched her for a moment through the window, observing her tense, still posture. She barely moved to breathe, but the tightness in her face and the clenched fist knotted in the sheet spoke eloquently of her pain. She had a bit more colour now that she was conscious, no longer quite the picture of a corpse, but there were hallmarks of injury in everything from the way she held herself to the sickly shade of her skin.  


The doctor on duty walked briskly to his side. She was unremarkable, with a middling brown complexion and rippling hair pulled tightly back into a regulation twist. He couldn’t place her name and didn’t care enough to find it out.  


“She woke up about an hour ago,” the woman began, a slight disapproving tone in her voice. “We attempted to get some initial information from her, as requested by the interrogation team, but she hasn’t given us much.”  


“What has she said?”  


“’Voss’. It’s all she’ll say. We know it’s her name - we received the reports from the other prisoners as well.” Condemnation laced the doctor’s voice as she said, “We’ve held back pain management to make her more compliant, but instead she just focuses on her discomfort.”  


Reaching out to brush against the captive’s mind, Kylo felt the searing agony of every breath. It was like pure fire, like being torn apart. It was far more than he expected to feel through such a light contact.  


“Bring what she needs,” he ordered, striding toward the prisoner’s room.  


After two long days of waiting he would finally know how whether her mind had survived Coratis’s mistake. She didn’t open her eyes to observe who’d entered the room, but he could see in the tiny shift of her head she was following the sound of his movement. She knew he was there.  


“Norah Voss.” Her eyes flew open then, at the sound of her name coming through his mask. She had no fear in her eyes, only a haze of pain. At the sight of him it changed to an expression of recognition followed by intense dislike. It was an interesting response. Trying to elicit another, and confirm his hypothesis, he said, “You are with the Resistance.” It wasn’t a question.  


“I have nothing to do with them. I’m not even interested in politics.”  


He stepped closer to hear her, the raspy sound of her voice barely reaching across the room. Towering over her, he demanded, “Tell me where they are located.”  


“I’m not Resistance. I don’t know where they are,” she insisted.  


Kylo reached out with the Force again, raising a hand slightly to focus his power, brushing against the fringes of her thoughts - just enough to feel truth or lie. He was hesitant to press further after what happened the last time he’d delved deep into someone’s mind. She pulled back slightly at his movement, and the sensation of invisible fingers running through the inside of her head, but her pain didn’t allow her to go far. “I can’t help you if you continue to lie to me, Norah. Who are you working with?”  


“I’m not lying! I’m not working with anyone,” she snapped, forcing each word out from between gritted teeth.  


“Then how did you find the planet? You must have had some assistance. We know the Resistance is interested in the Jedi. They helped you.”  


Leaning up in the bed, she looked him in the face. It almost felt as if she could see him beyond the mask, that she was looking him in the eye. Her voice was firm, if quiet, and he could feel the sincerity in her thoughts as she bit out, “I’m. Not. Resistance. I have nothing to do with them.”  


He’d been right - his instincts unfailing. She wasn’t hiding some secret affiliation. He would have felt the lie, even if the precise truth wasn’t clear. Something about her didn’t seem cut from the same cloth as the other Resistance agents he’d encountered. She was too soft, too selfish. The Resistance wouldn’t hire local natives to dig up their own land without telling them why - endangering them without giving them the chance to say no - and the other prisoners had been completely ignorant of her true purpose on their planet. It didn’t really matter. He wanted something else from her. Changing tacks, he said, “Tell me what you know about the Jedi.”  


“They’re dead,” she hissed, eyes flashing.  


It was true enough in its way, and certainly what the rest of the galaxy thought. But it wasn’t what he wanted to hear. “On the planet you asked about Jedi. Why?”  


“I was looking for their temple.”  


“Why?” he pressed, curious to hear her answer.  


She pressed her lips together, refusing him. Her reasons didn’t really matter. It was what she found and, more importantly, _how_ she found it that was important. Even better, it was a refusal to answer, not an inability. Her memory had survived. He was certain of it.  


“What made you think the Jedi had something to do with that world?” he tried.  


Defiance warred with discomfort on her face, but still she said nothing.  


Holding back his frustration with her continued refusals, he tried, “Did you find what you were looking for?”  


“Yes. And then you destroyed it,” she spat. It was true, from her perspective. Her anger flared, reminded of his role that day. She had hated him in that moment, but only an echo of the original intensity remained. Her pain was too overwhelming to focus on fury.  


“Tell me, what did you find in the temple?” he asked, lacing the question with a soft push from the Force.  


She fell silent, glaring at him. A few rogue thoughts ran over the surface of her mind, memories of her time in the structure. The ache of hard labor digging it out of the valley floor. Disappointment, frustration at what lay within, or rather what didn’t. It wasn’t promising. The flash of an image - a towering mural of two combatants wielding lightsabers - lit up his mind. He could see it as she had. It _had_ been a Jedi location. He felt his excitement mirror hers, but for completely different reasons. Drawing out her emotions, echoes of thought and feeling as they rose to the forefront, he adjusted his tactics.  


“I can see it - the mural on the wall. You searched for so long, wondered if you were wrong, but there is your proof. You were right, Norah. You found them,” he said, reacting to each new flash of feeling as each phrase pushed and pulled at her memories and emotions, trying to find the right mix of praise and dominance to make her open up to him.  


“I found their ruins. They were gone,” she said, glaring at him.  


“You knew they’d be gone. You had no hope that they were still there. They’d abandoned that place so long ago. But what they left behind…” he trailed off, digging slightly deeper. “Their records. You wanted their records.” His own interest zeroed in on the memory, the image of the black and yellow droid reaching out to touch the input of the old data storage unit. If there was anywhere that could lead him to the old temples it would be in the contemporary archives from when they were in use. Musing aloud, he added, “Such a strange thing for you to want.”  


“I had my reasons,” she snarled, beginning to push back against his intrusion.  


Her attempts only brought the thoughts she tried to hide to the surface, making them easier to pick out. A childhood memory settled bright and sharp at the forefront, impossible to ignore. It was the first true thing about her he'd been able to grasp - and it raised more questions than it answered. Hoping to elicit a reaction, Kylo said, “I can see the old man, making things fly around the room without touching them. To a child the Force truly is magic.”  


He was surprised by the anger that tore through her as he spoke. She launched herself at him, pushing through the pain to try and strike him. Her reaction was almost shocking, causing him to stand still when he easily could have avoided her.  


“You don’t talk about him!” she growled, unable to get enough volume to shout, as she slammed a fist against his chest. It was as high as her arm would go, and the impact sent an implacable wave of agony shooting up her arm that dropped her to the ground. Cradling the limb tight to her chest, she opened her mouth in a silent scream and rocked against the pain.  


The doctor approached, standing in the doorway behind him. Kylo watched Norah writhe on the floor. She was surprisingly brave, standing up to him over and over again. Few people moved beyond fear of him, but she only seemed to rage. He knew rage. Perhaps she would make a good Resistance operative after all. He canted his head, wondering if he should attempt administering more pain or relieving it to loosen her tongue.  


“I will take away your pain, Norah,” he said, deciding even as he spoke, dropping to a crouch beside her. “And you will tell me how you found the temple. You will tell me who aided you to find it. You will tell me what you found in it.”  


The doctor darted forward at his direction, a burly nurse on her heels, and hefted the woman back onto the bed. She was shaking, fighting them, fighting herself, but they got her in place without much difficulty. She was too occupied by her own body to truly struggle. When the nurse moved to employ the neglected restraints Kylo waved him away. Her stunt had only hurt herself. There was no concern of a repeat act of defiance. And even if there was, what could she do?  


Silently directing the doctor to administer the medication, he watched the tight expression of agony smooth into one of drugged complaisance. Her limbs slid to the bed, slowly, and she opened her eyes again. They weren’t nearly so clear now, the narcotic haze settling over her in moments.  


“Perhaps we should have started with this,” he said, amused at the abrupt change of attitude, as he waved the medical personnel out of the room. Turning sharp again, he asked, “How did you locate the site on Arjanaz?”  


Her thoughts were harder to read through the fog of painkillers, irritating him for his lack of forethought. No longer clear images, her memories came to him as impressionist swaths of colour and feeling. She stayed silent, even drugged still refusing to give in to him. Flickers of memory winked into his mind and vanished, her thoughts slithering through his hold without giving him purchase. The only things he could grip were the things she focused on, building them firmly in her mind.  


“What led you to the planet?”  


Her resistance loosened under the influence of the narcotics, making it harder for her to keep silent. She rolled her shoulders, wincing at the distant pain it caused, and murmured, “Old data.”  


“The data you were looking for?”  


Shaking her head, she corrected, “Before that.”  


“You had other information - something that led you to Arjanaz? What information? Where did you find it?” he demanded, stepping closer.  


Pressing her lips together, she refused him, instead saying, “It’s all gone.”  


A flash of blue-gray memory resolved into clarity for an instant. She’d been in a small, dirty room that could have been on any of a thousand worlds, with a black and yellow droid - the same one from the temple memory - downloading something her mind painted as the key to finding the Jedi site. Her methods of extraction and the origin of the data was beyond his reach. He wasn’t sure if she was deliberately hiding it or her drugged mind simply couldn’t connect it together. Whatever the origin, the manner in which she found this planet was in the droid, buried with the rest of the Arjaxi building at the bottom of a hundred meters of mud and debris.  


“What about the source of the information? Where did it come from?”  


“It’s gone. It doesn’t matter.”  


“What do you mean, ‘it’s gone’?” His frustration was mounting again, harder to hold back now that he had confirmation that his order to prematurely destroy the temple had cost them significantly.  


“They were coming after us, to steal what we had, so I copied it and destroyed the original,” she murmured.  


Her hazy thoughts coalesced to show him the room again. Her proximity alarms were going off, but the distant footsteps running toward her were equally effective at telling her that they were coming. Fear pumped adrenaline into her system, making her hands tremble. The instant the droid signalled that it was done she ordered it to delete the original node. They weren’t going to take what was hers, what she’d worked so hard to get. A flash of petty pleasure at the thought of their coming anger when they found the archaic equipment stripped and emptied thrilled her. Slipping through the escape hatch, she left it all behind, but not before activating a little going-away present. The criminal scum coming for her would find nothing of value, but a faceful of caustic chemicals might teach them not to try and prey on people like her again. As for the data, all that mattered was what now resided solely in her droid.  


Clenching his teeth against the disappointment, Kylo redirected her, demanding, “Tell me what you found in the temple.”  


“Nothing,” she whispered, staring unfocused at the ceiling. “There was nothing there.”  


“You found something," he corrected. "The records. The droid.”  


“My droid,” she echoed. Anger and grief shaded her thoughts. “A4.”  


Pressing her, he said, “Yes. Your droid. What did it find?”  


“No. You destroyed it. You ruined everything. I begged you. I _begged_ you,” she hissed, making it clear that she was not the kind of person who begged for anything. “I begged you and you didn’t listen. It had everything. And you blew it up.”  


“It had what?” he asked, concerned by the turn of her whispers. Something about it made him think she didn’t just mean the way she’d found the planet.  


She turned to look at him, eyes burning, seeing him through the drugs. Her fury was palpable. “You and your men destroyed it. I found them. I _saved them_ , and you blew it up anyway.”  


“The records?”  


“A4 copied them from the server. The last records of the Jedi,” she whispered, almost reverently, before turning angry again. “We had only gotten access that night. It was copying everything right up until your men showed up.”  


Preparing for the worst, Kylo asked, “Are you saying the droid had the only copy of all of this information?”  


“A4 didn’t have time to come up and transfer anything. It was still inside the temple,” she said, skewering him with her eyes. “And you destroyed it.”


	15. Fury

### Fury

### Kylo

  
He stormed from the medbay, his rage visible to anyone with eyes. Stormtroopers and officers alike jumped out of his way as he passed, sensing the danger without understanding why. Retreating to his sanctuary, he held his fury tightly coiled until he was alone. It had taken everything not to unleash his lightsaber in the medbay, to vent his fury on the walls with reckless strikes. Her eyes burned him, even now, even in his own room. The sight of her clawed at him, drugged and broken and furious as she whispered the terrible truth of what he’d done. Looking around his spare chamber, he regretted his choice of location. There was nothing to unleash his rage upon here - the precious few artifacts hallowed and untouchable. He had to hold it, like trying to hold onto a hurricane, to press it inward and let it tear into him.  


_Another mistake. All you make is mistakes._  


This was the worst one yet. Failing to trust his instincts about the traitorous stormtrooper was nothing to this. Losing the droid with map to Skywalker and everything that had gone wrong with Rey and now this. Rey had been different because she had made her choices - to oppose him, to fight, to escape. Others had acted in opposition, altered the course of action through their decisions. But this, this was different. This mistake could only be attributed to him. No one else had ordered the temple destroyed. It was his own voice calling out the instruction. His own stupid vanity that thrilled at the sight of another Jedi remnant eradicated from the galaxy.  


Hux had been right to threaten to take it to the Supreme Leader. He would be furious. Kylo had risked their purpose in ignorance. She’d screamed, fought to get away, cried out over and over that the droid mattered, that they couldn’t destroy it. He hadn’t listened. He’d preened in the face of her desperation.  


_Foolish. Stupid. Arrogant. Look what you’ve done. A hidden Jedi archive, gone, because of your pride._  


Norah had been right to hate him. To attack him. He could feel the pathetic force of her strike against his chest, the sad effort to hurt him. She was too weak to do it now, but if she’d been stronger perhaps she could have done him the damage he deserved.  


He hadn’t even gotten the information from her about her allies. She wasn’t Resistance - he was sure of it - but that didn’t mean she hadn’t had help. The realization that he’d forgotten to push her there, to force her to reveal her accomplices in finding the temple to begin with, stopped his agitated pacing. The lightsaber was in his hand, flaring to life. Its jagged, uncontrolled edge glowed red. Its colour matched his vision, the whole world painted crimson. Like her hair.  


Beside and beyond his fury there was something else batting at the edge of his awareness. It was a whisper behind his ear, a brush of sensation from some outside source. He’d felt it before, only when it was strong at its origin, carrying across the infinite depths between stars. It had taken some time to understand what it was - so alien and so unwelcome.  


_Rey._  


Ever since she’d turned his power against him and crawled into his head, there were moments like this - an instant when her awareness flitted over him, or he was given a taste of her emotional state, or where he knew she could feel what he felt. It was too thin to allow him to track her location or to know what she was thinking - despite his frequent attempts to figure out where she’d gone this way. Her invasions were unexpected, uncontrollable, and almost impossible to guard against. Closing her out was possible, but it took a level of calm that escaped him at the moment. Wherever she was, she was feeling something strongly now. It felt so different from his own roiling emotions it was hard to place, but the sudden realisation made him that much angrier.  


_Satisfaction._ She was enjoying his self-hatred.  


He stabbed the lightsaber straight into the nearest wall, using his rage to fuel the blow, pouring his fury into the strike. The metal gave way instantly, smoking and bubbling bright orange around the blade. Drips of molten metal fell to the floor, coming faster by the moment, hissing and spitting as they fell. It wasn’t as much of a release as he would get from hacking at the wall, but unlike with a computer terminal on some other floor, he wouldn’t tolerate the intrusion of a repair crew in his private quarters. A hole could be ignored or, if needed, swiftly patched without removing the entire panel.  


The worst of his anger spent, Kylo forced himself to let go of the self-castigation and find his center. Spending the strength of his emotion broke the connection, protecting him from Rey’s judgment. She was gone. At least until the next time.  


Drawing the blade back and switching it off, he saw the hole was larger than intended. The melting metal had eroded into a fist-sized opening, large enough to look in on the unused quarters beyond. No one was permitted to stay so close to his own chambers, the unofficial and unspoken rule sacrosanct. It was a smaller room than his own suite, barely more than a bedroom and closet-sized bathroom, but it was clearly visible through the hole. Kylo clenched his fists, calculating the amount of time he would have to suffer the repairmen, and pausing as an idea took shape.  


Whatever else she was, Norah had found this planet and its forgotten temple. The Empire hadn’t even accomplished that, and they had been actively hunting down and destroying Jedi sites for years before their destruction. He’d said it himself - if she did it once, she could do it again. Technically her ‘excavation’ hadn’t violated any laws, unless there was some local ordinance about such things, and those didn’t matter. The First Order saw the Jedi as anathema, forbidden, but laws to that effect would reinforce any idea that the Jedi were real and to be sought after. Instead they played a shadow game, striking out references from databases and coming down harshly on those who spoke of the sect, but they did not expressly have laws against what the woman had done. Since she wasn’t Resistance there was, in effect, no reason to keep her prisoner. And if she wasn’t a prisoner that made her status aboard the ship fairly obscure.  


She could even, if one didn’t look too closely, be considered a guest.


	16. Broken

### Broken

###  Norah

Norah had been left to languish in the medbay for the better part of a week, seeing no one but the occasional nurse. They only came to bring her meals. A medical droid entered to run a scanner over her several times a day, dosing her with medication infrequently, and ignoring everything else. The doctors didn’t even come to see her at all. She was left to think, and wait, and think, and dread. The nurses wouldn’t speak to her, wouldn’t answer her questions, wouldn’t tell her about her friends, and the droids seemed incapable of speech. The Arjaxi might as well have been part of some other person’s life for all she knew about their status. Without answers, she was left to imagine them suffering whatever torture she’d been subjected to, picturing their faces twisted in pain, damaged as she’d been damaged.  


She tried to remember what, exactly, they’d done to her. The memories refused to come, and part of her was grateful for that. Still, with nothing to do or distract her she found herself thinking of the last few moments on Arjanaz on a loop. She could remember the rain, the rough hands of the stormtrooper, the solid feeling of the bodies around her and the slick unsteadiness of the mud beneath them. She could remember the fear, not knowing if the stormtroopers would summarily shoot them all, or if - by some miracle - they’d leave without killing anyone. The terror from the man in black’s proclamation, and the sight of the troopers lobbing grenades. The explosion. The valley floor collapsing. A4, gone. The sight of him on the ramp of his shuttle, watching it all. Then nothing.  


She prodded at the empty space in her mind mercilessly, trying to force the missing moments to return, but nothing did. They were simply gone - like nothing had happened at all. The burn in her chest said otherwise. The next thing she could remember was waking in the medbay, apparently not for the first time, and the nurse with the rough hands and the doctor with the cold eyes.  


_Cold eyes._ That almost sparked something but she couldn’t pin it down. The thought slithered away before she could grasp it firmly, disappearing without a trace. She slapped a hand down in frustration, instantly regretting it as pain shot up her arm. The pain was the only thing that seemed real. It was a low-level constant, flaring brighter and hotter at times - especially with movement, but it never fully went away. She could even feel it when they gave her the pain medication that left her floating in a fog, hiding underneath the chemical haze. Waiting to rise again. It had faded substantially since the first moment she’d woken up in this room, barely a single flame now compared to the raging wildfire it had been. But it was always there.  


A flicker of movement caught her eye. The nurse, passing by the window, glanced in as if to reassure himself that she was still there. He passed every hour or two, at least as far as she could guess the time, always looking in with suspicion. She could barely lift her arm yet somehow he thought she was going manage some daring escape in between his rounds.  


She’d thought about it, of course. Even tried, once, to do it. Her body had barely seemed to function, as if it were asleep from head to toe, with the sharp needles that usually followed already stabbing her from shoulder to wrist. She made it across the room, one slow step at a time, but when she reached the panel for the door she couldn’t manage to get her hand to function with the finesse required to actually trigger it. Attempting it with her left hand proved slightly more successful, but in the end it turned out they’d locked her in. She’d retreated to the bed before he came back around, feeling like a failure and a fool.  


Still, she had to try and get her body back under control if there was to be any chance of a successful escape. It was a stupid dream, of course, to think that she’d be able to get away - but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t cling to it. It wasn’t like she had anything else to do. Cradling her bandaged right arm and ignoring the burning in her chest, she slid off the edge of the recovery bed and put her feet firmly on the cold floor. It was easier than it had been a few days prior, when she’d made her original attempt on the door. She felt weak but not really more so than expected after days lying in bed. In fact, other than her damaged right arm and chest, she felt fairly intact.  


Her knees firmed up beneath her after the first few steps, carrying her to the far side of the room without incident. Norah smiled as she reached out to touch the wall with a single finger, feeling some positivity for the first time in days. She turned and walked to the other side, touching it the same way. It was only a few steps from end to end but it was more than she would have been able to do a few days before. It was a promising start.  


The room was stark, little more than a bed and some monitors. There were no other landmarks to go toward, just the repetition of wall to wall pacing. After the fourth circuit she had to sit down, feeling light headed, but once it passed she got back up and resumed the walk. She may not be able to do more than march to her own execution, but if it came to that she intended to do it under her own power. And, if possible, she could at least try to run.  


"And then they can shoot me in the back in some hallway instead of making a display out of my execution," she murmurred to herself, baring her teeth in a facsimile of a smile. At least then it would be somewhat on her terms.  


Norah realized she’d lost track of time when the next flash of movement at the window came with a surprised expression from the nurse rather than his customary suspicious scowl. He made straight for the door, even as she returned to her bed. Some childish part of her mind almost thought she could pretend she hadn’t been caught out of it as long as she was back before the door opened. She didn’t even accomplish that, hearing the door open behind her as she tried to sit back down.  


“What do you think you’re doing?” the nurse demanded, stalking toward her.  


“Stretching my legs?” she tried, turning to face him with an uncomfortable awareness of her state of undress. Her snarled hair trailed down the back of the medical gown, brushing against her bare skin, with only a single wraparound tie at her waist allowing her to keep any dignity.  


He moved into her personal space, too close for comfort, and said, “Get back in bed or I’ll put you back.”  


If he’d been more attractive or less aggressive she might have said something like, ‘Promises, promises’ or a saucy ‘Is that so?’, but judging by the look on his uncomfortably-near face he wouldn’t take well to that kind of thing, so she kept her mouth shut, lowered her head, and complied. She didn’t want to give him an excuse to put his hands on her, remembering all the rough adjustments he liked to employ. She was sure he took pleasure in giving her pain, and her body supplied enough of that on its own.  


“Stay there,” he commanded, turning to inform on her to his superior. “The doctor will hear about this.”  


As soon as the door was safely closed behind him she replied, “Give her my love.”  


Norah wondered if she would be punished somehow for this. All she’d done was get out of bed and walk the room a few times. She hadn’t even tried to open the door this time. Surely there was nothing wrong with that? Of course, this was the First Order she was dealing with. They could decide she was breaking one of their laws just by breathing and there was nothing that would stop them from punishing her for it. There was no telling what they’d do for this ‘infraction’ - withhold her pain medication seemed likely, but they could just as likely kick her out of the medbay entirely and down to whatever passed for prisoner holding cells. Whatever they decided, she wouldn’t be able to fight it. She just had to accept whatever came, right up until the moment she could do something about it.  


When the door opened again the person who entered wasn’t the female doctor she was used to. Instead, an older man with hair that ran from bright white along the sides to shockingly dark - if thin - hair on top entered the room. He was the kind of man you knew at a glance had been incredibly handsome when he was young, and even at his advanced age he had a compelling look. There was something about him that felt familiar, something in his upright carriage and the quiet aura of control. He almost reminded her of home.  


“Hello, Norah. My name is Colonel Corddray. I am the chief medical officer on this ship. I hear you’ve gotten yourself out of bed,” he said as he approached, his voice as gruff as his heavily-lined face implied it would be. Norah listened for a tone of censure, disapproval, anything to help her judge what kind of punishment was forthcoming. “It’s about time. I’d been expecting you to start walking around two days ago.”  


“What?” she asked, too surprised by the statement to think of anything clever.  


“You’ve been a bit lazy,” he said, reaching out and gesturing for her to stand up. As she shifted to get her feet under her, he continued, “It’s a good sign that you’re finally getting around. I was beginning to feel concerned.”  


Corddray slipped a hand under her elbow - on the good arm - to help support her as she stood. She was surprised by the gentleness to his touch, the soft strength in his hands. When she was firmly upright she realised just how tall he was, standing at least half a head over her. A fair bit above average herself, that made his height rather impressive. His expression was stern but there was none of the coldness or cruelty of the other doctor. He was a professional in every sense, carefully leading her to walk around the room as he evaluated her.  


“Your injuries were extensive,” he said, walking beside her, “but your body is healing well. Our scans show the expected scar tissue forming at several points, especially around the contact points and in the muscle where the worst of the tearing centered, but you’ll be pleased to know I expect a good recovery for you.”  


She was happy to hear that, somehow glad to know that this grandfatherly man was pleased with her. Something about him made her want to be in his good graces. She wasn’t sure if it was his quiet authority, or his gentle manner, or simply the way he reminded her of home. It might even just be that he was the first person to be even a little bit kind to her since the day the stormtroopers descended on the camp, when everyone else had been rough and cruel. It didn’t really matter why.  


“No one will tell me anything,” she began, unsure how far his kindness would extend. “I don’t even know what happened to me.”  


“Amnesia isn’t unusual with your kind of injury,” he said, turning her for another circuit around the room. “You experienced a strong electrical shock. Does that trigger anything for you?”  


_Electrical shock?_ She tried to connect the phrase to some glimmer of memory, some sense of experience, but nothing came.  


“No, I don’t remember that.”  


“It may come back to you, or it may not. Only time will tell,” he replied, gently letting go of her arm and signalling for her to continue walking.  


“What else did it do? What other injuries? I’m in pain all the time, here,” she said, using her good arm to gesture with the damaged one, “and in my chest. It feels like my heart is on fire.”  


“You feel that now?” he asked, concern flitting over his stern features.  


“Always. Even with the painkillers.”  


He walked to her, laying a hand on her shoulder and feeling the swollen, stiff tissue, saying, “The pain in your chest is from the muscle damage. You tore it quite badly when you were shocked. That will diminish with time. I can give you something to reduce this swelling. That will help minimize the strain on the muscle, but the scar tissue from the injury makes it increasingly likely that you will reinjure it. I would expect many strains in your future.”  


“Great,” she huffed, regretting the tone when he returned it with a sharp look.  


“As for your arm, that’s different,” he added, gently lifting and flexing the limb. “Does that hurt?”  


Gritting her teeth, Norah replied, “Everything hurts it.”  


Corddray nodded, continuing to manipulate the arm. “The regeneration serum repaired the damage from the shoulder dislocation three days ago. I’ve been monitoring your scans very closely. The electrical damage, however, is more severe.”  


“How severe?” she asked, squeezing her eyes shut against the pain.  


“I was more hopeful for a near-full recovery in the beginning. It would have taken time and a great deal of work. We can still do that work, and get you some function back, but from what I’ve seen in your scans I’m afraid it will never be the same.”  


Norah’s eyes flew open at the statement, looking at the lined face so close to her own. He looked up from her arm, stopping the movements for a moment.  


“What does that mean?” she whispered, afraid of the answer.  


“I can’t say definitively, but at this time I would say that you will never have the same use of your arm that you did before the injury. The nerve damage was relatively minor, all things considered, but nerves do not recover. With therapy and the right treatment you may be able to regain most of your fine motor functions, but there will always be pain. Likely there will always be some degree of weakness,” he said, pausing as if he was hesitant to tell her the worst. “And, it’s possible you may not recover any use at all. This may be the best it gets.”  


“But this is my right arm,” she said, disbelieving. “My dominant hand.”  


He nodded sympathetically and said, “Yes, I know. As I said, we will do what we can - therapy and medication and any other treatments we must - but this kind of injury can be devastating. You’re lucky to be alive, you know.”  


She couldn’t focus on what he was saying, instead gripping her damaged arm with her left hand. It hurt, but everything hurt it. Apparently it always would. It was impossible to wrap her head around, the idea that she’d always be like this, that she’d been crippled by something she couldn’t even remember. Tears blurred her vision, turning the world softer around the edges. The doctor continued to speak, his gruff voice delineating a plan for exercises he wanted her to begin immediately, but she barely heard him.  


“…can do in your room after we move you.”  


The phrase snapped her back to the present and the situation at hand.  


“Move me?” she echoed, suddenly picturing a featureless cell even smaller than the recovery room. A wave of despondency followed, filtering into her voice as she asked, “They don’t give prisoners physical therapy, do they? It’s just going to be this until the Order decides what to do with me.”  


He placed a hand on her good shoulder, a surprisingly comforting gesture from a man she suddenly had to reconcile with the cruelties of the First Order he worked for. His stern face suddenly seemed harsher, the heavy brows more intimidating, as she let go of the idea of him helping her. It had been foolish to think, even for a moment, that the First Order would rectify what they’d done to her. She tried to step back from him, to shrug off his hand, but in the tight space there wasn’t really anywhere for her to go. She was trapped.  


“Norah, regardless of the circumstances that brought you here, you are my patient. It is my responsibility to see to your care.”  


“I’m just a prisoner. I’m no one important. They’re just going to start torturing me, aren’t they? Again,” she added, gripping her right arm tighter.  


“Well, I can’t speak to that. But, to whatever extent I am able, I will ensure that you are given the aid you need.”  


“You won’t be able to help me. They’ll just do what they want and when they’re done I’m as good as dead,” she whispered.  


“Listen to me,” Corddray ordered, turning stern and commanding. “I am an officer in the First Order. A colonel. That rank means something. But I am also a physician. I will do everything in my power to get you well, and that includes making sure that you recover as much function in your arm as is possible. You may be questioned again. I can’t say. But I enjoy a good challenge, and this is going to be challenging, so rest assured you have an ally in me.”  


She looked up at him, at the lined face and the long nose and the firm set of his lips. He didn’t look anything like him, but she was reminded of her great-grandfather. The doctor carried himself the same way, with the same strength. She wanted to believe him, to believe in him, to have someone to look out for her, to help her. If he was telling the truth he was her best chance at recovery. It wasn’t like she had a lot of choice. Clinging to hope, she nodded. His smile was thin, but it seemed sincere as he gave her left shoulder a gentle squeeze. She thought he meant what he’d said, that he would be on her side.  


“Now, then. I’ll have a nurse bring you a change of clothes. Once you’ve changed, the stormtroopers outside will escort you to your new room.”  


Hope collapsed in on itself, watching his smile stay unchanged at the statement, dissipating entirely as he walked out of the room. If he could hand her off to the stormtroopers, then he wasn't on her side. And that meant she was alone.


	17. Transition

### Transition

###  Norah

Norah felt like a child, playing dress-up in some stored away finery, only it wasn’t her grandmother’s old dresses she was trying on. It was a uniform of the First Order. There was no rank on it, of course, but the cut of the black fabric was unmistakably military. It felt wrong, putting on their clothing like she belonged among them. She wasn't ignorant of their purpose. She knew that they were the children of the Empire, hungry to complete the subjugation of the galaxy. She knew what they would do if given half a chance, because she'd grown up in the wreckage left behind by their forebears. Wearing their uniform felt like a violation.  


From a purely physical standpoint it was a struggle putting on the pants, the undershirt, and particularly the jacket with only the one functional arm. The fabric rubbed strangely against her bandages. Her hair - already tangled and matted from days in the medbay - was almost impossible to pull out from under the jacket. After a few tugs she gave up and left it. She wasn’t one of them, so it didn’t matter what state her uniform was in. Refusing to treat their uniform with respect was also the only form of protest she could muster that wasn't likely to get her manhandled. Besides which, they hadn’t provided a proper covering for her hair. Days of exposure to the medical staff and the interrogation by the man in black had almost desensitized her to the desire to cover it but a lifetime of training was not easily surrendered.  


Stepping into the boots without bothering to try and fasten them felt odd, but she wasn’t going to tax herself any more than she had to. Just wiggling her feet in from the top was exhausting enough. After so many days of stillness, the sudden expenditure of energy nearly had her ready to crawl back into bed. Her skin felt grimy, days of sweat and sickness clinging to every inch, but even given what the change of clothing represented it was nice to be out of hospital robes.  


Calling it good enough, she walked to the door, half-hoping they’d changed their minds and locked her in again. That would mean she was staying put, not going to some unknown other. Unfortunately, the door opened easily at a touch on the control panel. A flush of adrenaline ran through her at the sight of the two white-armoured figures on the other side, centering in her stomach. The identical helmets turned in her direction, identical blaster rifles held in a position of general readiness. The nurse with the rough hands stood by a counter behind them, raising an eyebrow at the state of her clothing. From the look on his face she guessed he’d have been happy to ‘assist’ her in fixing it had she asked. It wouldn’t be a pleasant experience. The stormtroopers didn’t seem overly concerned by her appearance, and for a moment she wondered if they’d seen her on the way in to the medbay - in her own clothes, unconscious and burned.  


One of the troopers waved her forward, directing her toward the exit. She glanced around the ward, hoping to see Colonel Corddray again on the way out, but the old man seemed to have vanished. The soldiers sandwiched her, one ahead and one behind, walking purposefully without any concern about her ability to keep pace. After days languishing in a recovery bed she wasn’t so sure she could keep up.  


Norah tried, at first, to memorize their route, noting landmarks at they passed, but after a few moments of twisting, identical corridors she realised there was no point. The ship was clean and spare in the way of a military vessel and large enough that she was certain she’d never be able to find her way back to the medbay without a guide.  


“Not that going back there would do me any good,” she murmured to herself.  


“What was that?” the stormtrooper behind her asked. She was surprised to hear a female voice, and then wondered why it surprised her.  


“Nothing,” she replied, trying for a non-threatening smile. “Just thinking out loud.”  


“Keep your eyes forward,” the other woman ordered, gesturing slightly with the barrel of her weapon.  


Norah turned quickly, not wanting to provoke her. The trooper ahead didn’t slow or turn to look, simply maintaining the pace, until they signalled a lift to open. The pair bundled her inside without another word. She watched the numbers blink, going up rapidly instead of down as she’d expected. She wasn’t sure if it was common for a First Order ship to have their medbay lower than their detention level, but as the numbers continued to climb she decided it didn’t matter. She didn’t know anything about military vessels, so maybe to them it made sense or had some practical application. Either way, the numbers were still going up.  


When the lift finally stopped, the troopers led her down another series of halls. They gave her nothing, no spoken directions, no chances to slow down and let her adjust to being upright for so long. They just pushed ahead like silent automatons. Thinking of them that way, as primitive droids instead of flesh and blood humans, allowed her to tolerate the treatment a little easier. Droids didn’t care about human weaknesses or needs. It they were simple enough, they couldn’t be reasoned with or adjust their behaviour to allow for human frailty. They simply were. They followed their orders to the letter, with no room for interpretation, exactly as told. Just like these two.  


The lead stormtrooper stopped abruptly, activating a panel in the wall. She hadn’t really noticed the change in scenery, but there was something decidedly residential-feeling about the hall. It seemed darker than the others they’d come through, somehow, but it didn’t put her in mind of the detention level she’d been imagining. The doors set into the walls also weren’t like the ones she’d seen in planetary detention facilities, particularly the one sliding open in front of them.  


The room beyond was well-appointed, and much larger than the room in the medbay, though far from a luxury suite. A bed stood against the far wall - not the bare bench she’d pictured in her mind. There was a private bathroom visible through an open door to the left, an additional pair of closed doors on either side of the room, and even a computer console in the workstation to the right. It was far too plush to be any kind of cell at all. This was clearly some kind of officer’s quarters - much nicer than what a stormtrooper would likely have, let alone a prisoner.  


“Inside,” the female trooper said flatly.  


“I don’t think this is the right place,” Norah said, afraid to step through and have them turn on her for ‘attempting to escape’ or ‘resisting’.  


“Get inside,” the soldier repeated, pushing Norah into the room.  


Turning to protest, Norah saw the door close sharply behind her. Part of her wanted to try and see if it would open at her command, but the rest didn’t want to test the stormtroopers she was sure remained waiting on the other side. Instead she stood there, tensely waiting for someone to pop out and attack her for being in the wrong place. Minutes passed without any of the doors opening and revealing the owner of the room.  


She was tired after the sudden exertion of the day. The long walk through the ship had drained what little energy she had, and her pain seemed intent on taking the rest. It had flared to brilliant life again, consuming her attention now that there were no new corridors to distract her.  


“Where’s a doctor when you need one?” she mused. “Preferably with some painkillers.”  


Feeling a bit weak, she pulled out the chair from the workstation and took a seat. Reasoning that the rightful owner of the place couldn’t mind her sitting in a chair, especially since they were keeping her waiting so long, she leaned into the backrest and closed her eyes. It was harder to keep the pain out this way, with nothing else to focus on, but the pain itself served as a distraction from the room and the strange turn of events. She could try not to wonder why she was there, or what they were planning to do to her. She could try to push down the ever-present fear, the not knowing what was coming, the worry.  


Drowsiness lay on her like a blanket. She was tempted to leave the chair for the bed, but didn’t dare press her luck there. Whoever she was waiting on might not have a problem with her sitting there, but they would certainly have a problem with her sleeping in their bed. She was exhausted - from her body, from the pain, from the dread. It all piled on to steal away her strength, until finally there was nothing left to fight with. Using her good arm as a pillow, she let herself lie against the desk and drifted away.


	18. Proposition

### Proposition

###  Norah

She jerked awake to the sound of the door opening. Sharply sitting upright, Norah was confused to see the figure that had entered the room wasn’t coming through the door she’d used, but the door set between the console and the bed. It took her tired mind a moment to catch up and realise that he’d come through from an adjoining room. This must be his room, then - the man in black.  


He looked the same as she’d seen him in the medbay, without the cloak he was wearing on Arjanaz, again towering over her. She always seemed to be lower when he was around - on Arjanaz on her knees, in the medbay on the cot and then the floor, now in a chair. The expressionless mask stared in her direction. She could feel his eyes boring into her. A sudden sensation of vulnerability came over her, knowing that he’d seen her asleep, and even more so that she was improperly uncovered in front of him. In the medical ward it was easy to push away the fact that her hair was on display, but sequestered in a private room - a private _bedroom_ \- alone with a strange man, she felt almost naked.  


“You’re awake,” he said, the harsh voice making her jump.  


Rubbing her eyes to clear them, and to give her a moment not to look at him, she nodded. It was cowardly, not merely looking away, but hiding like a child. It was hard to hide how unsettling she found him.  


“I hope your quarters are to your liking,” he said genially. “I had them bring you here.”  


Norah dropped her hand and looked at him. He must have misspoken. These were _his_ quarters.  


He added, “If you don’t, adjustments can be made.”  


“What are you talking about?”  


“Your room,” he replied, gesturing slightly to the general space.  


She followed the movement, understanding his meaning but not how it could be true. The same soft bed, private bath, and computer terminal filled the space as had been there when she dozed off. It still wasn’t the hard, empty cell that awaited prisoners of the First Order. She looked back at him, puzzlement on her face, and asked, “How is this my room?”  


It was impossible to tell if he was amused or irritated behind the mask. The heavily modulated voice didn’t give anything away as he replied, “I arranged it.”  


“Why?” It didn’t make sense. What possible reason could he have for such a thing?  


“Because you are no longer a prisoner.”  


The statement made even less sense than his declaration that the place was hers. She shook her head, waiting for the joke. Apparently tired of waiting for her to catch up, he took a step closer and said, “I want you to work for me. I think we want similar things, and that you have something to offer that I need.”  


“I doubt it,” she scoffed. “What could I possibly have to offer that warrants this?”  


Ignoring her question, he redirected the conversation. “What were you looking for in the temple? Why were you looking for Jedi?”  


“Jedi artifacts are valuable,” Norah hedged. “Get them in the right hands and you can make a fortune.”  


“That’s not what you were looking for,” he stated. “You didn’t go there for credits.”  


She didn’t know what to say in the face of his certainty. He was right, of course, but she didn’t know why he was so sure. “No, I didn’t.”  


If he hadn’t been wearing the mask she was sure she’d see him smirking. She remembered the feeling in the medbay, him towering over her, talking about things he had no way of knowing, the strange feeling that he was touching her very thoughts. Unable to hold back the question any more, she blurted out, “Who are you?”  


The modulated voice was painfully harsh as he said, “Kylo Ren.”  


She’d heard the name before, even in the circles she travelled. The dread enforcer of the First Order, a dark knight rumoured to have unnatural abilities. It suddenly made so much more sense to her, the feeling that he’d been in her head, and his interest in the Jedi.  


_The Force. He has the Force._  


Her heart hammered in her chest. She was so close to one of them, and not some dusty memory or ancient holdover from before the Purge. It was impossible - after all her work she’d simply stumbled into the presence of a living Force practitioner. Looking at him with new understanding, she suddenly noticed the cylinder clipped to his belt. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t noticed it before.  


_Lightsaber.  
_

“What were you planning to do with the data?” Ren asked, seemingly unaware of her excitement.  


“That’s my business.” The mask turned sharply at her tone, but she lifted her chin. She wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of backing down, no matter what he was. Not on this. Not yet.  


“Tell me how you found the temple.” She hadn’t expected him to allow the insubordination. It wasn’t a request, but it didn’t have the finality of a demand. He sounded oddly curious.  


“Hard work. What does that have to do with anything?”  


His helmet tipped slightly to the side, evaluating her. She regretted her flippant tone, afraid he would suddenly rescind the favours he seemed interested in bestowing. Before he could throw her out and order the stormtroopers to take her to the real cells, she said, “I got ahold of a fragment of the old Jedi Archive. Ancient stuff. I combed through it for weeks, looking for anything useful. There were repeated references to ‘The Red Temple’, but no coordinates, no planetary or solar name. So I put them all together and looked for other points of reference. Other named planets and stars referred to in the same entries. And then I started looking for those worlds, and for the systems around them which matched the descriptions of the Red Temple. Eventually I figured out it was red because of the star. I’d been looking for a red building like an idiot. And then I took a leap of faith, and I went to Arjanaz. It’s the only habitable world circling a red star in the area that I narrowed it to. I went to the planet, found a guide, found the temple.”  


“Impressive.”  


“I didn’t do it alone,” she said, an accusatory tone creeping into her voice. “I had a droid. Its name was A4. You blew it up.”  


Ren nodded, acknowledging the charge without apologizing for his actions. His voice was cold as he said, “And the droid had the data from the planet.”  


“ _A4_ had the data from the archive, too,” she replied, stressing the droid’s name. “If that’s what you were trying to get from me, you’re going to have to dig it out from where you buried it.”  


“So, the droid was your only aid? No one else helped you find the temple?”  


Not trusting his slightly too-casual tone, she shook her head, but answered honestly, “It was just me. I didn’t need any help.”  


“And where did you get a piece of the archive? The Empire destroyed it.”  


“It doesn’t matter where I got it,” she snapped, risking his displeasure. “What do you care?”  


“Because I’m also looking for a Jedi temple. An ancient one.” There was something in his voice that put a shiver down her spine - a thread of hate in his words. She was suddenly reminded of the fact that she should be very afraid of this man. “Whatever you had isn’t important. I have the Imperial Archive, including what they confiscated from the Jedi. I can give you access to it, and in return you can help me find the temple I’m looking for.”  


Her heart seemed ready to burst out of her chest, it was pounding so hard. “I would have access to the Jedi Archive? The complete archive? Not just part of it?”  


“You would have access to whatever you need to find me the temple I seek.”  


“Don’t you have people who can do that for you? You have an army at your disposal,” she said, kicking herself as her mouth ran away with her. Reminding him that he didn’t need her was not wise when he had the power to throw her in a cell somewhere and forget her, among other things.  


He didn’t seem bothered by her tone, stating, “They haven’t found what I want.”  


“And you think I can?”  


His gaze was like lead, heavy enough to pin her in place, as he stated, “Yes, I do.”  


He’d said she wasn’t a prisoner any more, but still she couldn’t help but ask, “What’s in it for me?”  


“You’re very mercenary.”  


“A girl’s gotta eat,” she snapped automatically.  


Luckily, he seemed amused by her boldness. “We share resources. I give you the archive, you find me the old Jedi worlds. My ‘army’ can secure anything found there. If their temples have whatever it is you’re looking for, you’ve achieved it without having to dig it out of the ground yourself. If they have what I’m looking for then you’ve done your job.”  


Norah paused, evaluating the offer. He didn’t know she’d already been all but sold on it. She could let him think she was still interested in excavating whatever outposts they found while she did her real work on the archive. To think, after all the painstaking, tedious work she’d done he was ready to just hand the whole thing to her. It was more than she could have dreamed up, lying in a tent on Arjanaz or hunting through the Undercity on Coruscant.  


She shifted in her seat, causing a flare of pain. It sobered her to be suddenly reminded of the damage they’d done, what the doctor had told her. Gesturing to her arm, she said, “What about this? What your people did to me?”  


“Colonel Corddray has already informed me of his intentions. I will permit you to continue treatment with him to recuperate.”  


“No one lays another hand on me. Ever,” she said icily. If she was going to do this, even think about doing this, she was going to set as many terms as she could, up to and including brokering protection. If Ren was as powerful as they said, he was perfect for that.  


“Agreed. However, as you will be working for me - not the First Order - your movements aboard the ship will be restricted. When you wish to leave this room you will be escorted.”  


She nodded, accepting the condition. It was reasonable. “And I’m not a prisoner?”  


He shook his head, but said, “Your situation is complex.”  


“What about my friends?”  


“Your laborers?”  


“The Arjaxi,” she replied firmly, bristling at his correction. “They’re not prisoners either. They go home.”  


“I’ve already released them,” he said, surprising her. “Did you think I would keep them here when, as you said, they knew nothing of what you were doing?”  


Guilt came hard on the heels of his question. Everything they’d gone through was her fault. If what he was saying was true, then they were safe. Home. It stung that she hadn’t gotten a chance to explain, to apologize, but as long as they were safely away it wasn’t important.  


“If it makes you feel better, you should know they didn’t seem to blame you. They’re a very forgiving people.”  


It stung more, hearing that. She bit the inside of her cheek, hoping to hold back the beginnings of tears. She wasn’t going to cry in front of him. Especially not now.  


“You swear it? They’re free?”  


“You doubt me? I’ve never given you cause for that.”  


He was playing with her. She was sure of it. But it wasn’t like she really had a choice. If she said no, what were the chances that he’d let her go? And even if he did, what could she do wherever they dropped her? She had no credits left, no droid, no friends. It would be impossible to get home, let alone deal with her injuries. There were no other options, really. And to say yes, to finally have the Jedi Archive at her disposal… It was hard to keep from grinning at the thought.  


“I have a great deal of expectation for this venture. I believe you will be successful where others have failed. I believe you will find the First Temple,” Ren stated. The certainty in his voice stunned her. He meant every word. It was humbling, in a way, to have such a powerful man proclaim such a thing with such conviction, but the pressure of his expectation was already heavy. She knew what men like him did to people who disappointed them. “So, is it agreed?”  


“Yes. I agree,” Norah replied, wondering what she’d gotten herself into. “I’ll help you.”  


He nodded, as if it hadn’t already been certain. As if she’d had a choice.  


“You’ve made the right decision,” he stated, reaching toward her.  


Norah jerked back, away from the outstretched hand. He leaned closer, activating a control sequence on the computer terminal, ignoring her response. The console flared to life, acknowledging his code. A flush of embarrassment warmed her face but he didn’t seem to notice or care.  


“The Imperial Archive is at your disposal, though not the communication system. The Jedi destroyed their own archive during their uprising, but some was recovered afterward. Unfortunately it is severely fragmented, so it will take a great deal of work to piece together what we are looking for. It’s not much different from what you’ve done before, so you shouldn’t find it too difficult. That is where you will focus your efforts. I expect results.” He added, “And I expect them quickly.”  


She nodded, not looking at him, eager for him to leave. Despite her excitement she felt sick at what she’d done. What she’d agreed to be a part of. What would happen if she failed. He turned to leave and she began to relax, ready to be alone to contemplate the turn of events. A sound drew her attention. He pulled out a drawer inset in the wall by the bed, picking up something from within, before turning back to her.  


“I thought you might like this back,” he said, reaching out again, letting a silvery chain dangle from his hand.  


She was stunned, not sure if it was some kind of trick. Mutely taking the necklace from him, she gripped the globe tight, feeling the impression of the raised continents bite into her hand. The metal warmed to her skin almost instantly. She’d thought it was gone, taken and destroyed with the rest of her possessions.  


_Does he know what’s inside? Did he find the cache?  
_

“Is it your homeworld?”  


“Yes,” Norah whispered, afraid where he would take this, if it was some kind of trick. The fixed expression of his helmet offered no clues to his thoughts. She didn’t know if he’d discovered the hidden device, or if he was truly attempting to be - in his way - kind. He gave her nothing to judge by, silent and still.  


After a moment, Ren turned and walked back to the door he’d entered through. The door slid open at his touch, in a way she knew it would not for her, revealing a hint of the room on the other side.  


_His room._  


Ren glanced back at her, frozen in her seat. She wasn’t sure what he was thinking, if he was going to denounce her for holding back what she had in her hand. He was unreadable behind the mask. But he said nothing, and then he was gone.  


When the door closed behind him she exhaled, lungs burning from the breath she hadn’t realised she’d been holding. Looking down at the necklace, seeing the curves and shapes of home, she wondered what her family would think of her. What they would say if they saw her, here, in this uniform. Working with the First Order. Tossing the chain over her head, she straightened her back. They could think whatever they liked. She was going to have access to the entire surviving history of the Jedi. She was going to find their temples. She was going to work for Kylo Ren, to use him as thoroughly as he planned to use her.  


_He has the Force.  
_

It was magnificent, but she didn’t have time to think about the ramifications of what he could do and what that could mean for her. At least not yet. First, there was something more important to do. Something she’d been looking for for a long time. If he was telling the truth about what he was giving her, she didn’t want to waste a moment.  


Activating her terminal, Norah prepared for a long, intensive exercise. The Imperial Archive was incredible, vast and diverse, but it took time to figure out how to navigate through it to find the Jedi records. Luckily the interface wasn’t far different from others she’d used, so the learning curve wasn’t too steep. The Jedi Archive was even less complete than Ren had said. There were massive and distinct gaps in the data, particularly noticeable towards the most recent end of the logs. Entire sections had been carved out, either redacted by the First Order or Galactic Empire, or destroyed by the Jedi themselves to prevent their enemies from getting it. Glancing up at his door, as if Ren would appear to make sure she was doing what he wanted, Norah opened the personnel files of the Jedi. It had been severely targeted for alteration, but there was no telling by whom. Typing in the first name, Norah held her breath and hoped for a positive result.  


**'Aya Surros.'**  


The computer seemed to be considering whether or not to fulfill her request, pondering it for long enough that she worried it had somehow frozen on the incriminating screen. Finally, after too many moments, it came up with its reply.  


**‘No entries found.’**  


Sinking back in the chair, and feeling her heart plummet, Norah stared at the words. She’d had such hope, spent so much time, so much effort, all for nothing. It wasn’t the only thing she’d been seeking, but this was the one that - in some ways - mattered the most. And it was a failure.  


Reaching up to clear the search, Norah decided to attempt one more before giving up for the night. Carefully typing the beloved name, she bit her lip as the computer began its search.  


**‘Ghrai Surros.’**  


A symbol indicated that the terminal was working, drawing her attention as she waited.  


**‘No entries found.’**  


“Damn it,” she hissed, dropping back against the seat.  


A painful tingling sensation spread through her chest, different from the fiery agony of her injuries. This came from within herself, from her disappointment, and the weight of days of fear and dread, and the lonely ache of isolation. Turning off the monitor, she walked to the bed and curled into as tight a ball as she could manage. The emptiness inside only grew sharper.


	19. Observer

### Observer

###  Kylo

Kylo went to his terminal, bringing up the visual feed from the room next door. Norah sat where he’d left her, clutching the bauble he’d returned. It didn’t take her long to change attitudes, barely waiting for him to leave before she opened the archives. He’d judged her rightly, expecting her to do something like this, although she made her move sooner than he’d thought she would. The left side of the screen displayed a duplicate of her monitor, showing him every selection she made on her terminal. He watched her face as she navigated through the database. Her choice to go for personnel records surprised him. There was no way for her to know the final act of defiance from the Jedi had been to destroy their records of all living Jedi, all Force-sensitive potential Jedi, and all family members of their Order. It had made tracking them down more difficult for the Empire, drawing out the Purge for decades.  


Following her lead, a moment behind and without the restrictions she laboured under, Kylo started his own search for the names she entered. His own terminal was monitored only in the usual sense - the First Order observed everyone, regardless of station - and it didn’t have the excised or restricted sections in the databases as hers. Norah unconsciously bit her lip as she waited for her search results. From the way she worried it with her teeth he almost expected her to draw blood. He watched the light of hope in her eyes flicker out and die at the lack of answers. It was an interesting reaction, one worth examining at a later date.  


While the right side of his console showed her kick off her boots and climb fully-clothed into her bed, he focused on his own search results. The Jedi Archive had no listing for Aya or Ghrai Surros, but the Old Republic Registry did. There were birth certificates for both the elder Ghrai and his daughter Aya.  


“Why search for a father and daughter among the Jedi?” he murmured.  


There were other records, too. A marriage license between Ghrai Surros and Avaline Nashar two decades before the Jedi Purge, birth certificates for five children between them, Aya included, with the last coming six years before the rise of the Empire, all on the planet Ardorellia. Then suddenly all trace of them vanished. The entire family disappeared off the rolls of the Galactic Registry, no further birth or marriage or death certificates for any of them, no census data attached to their names, nothing. Not a single record for any of them on that or any other planet. If they had been connected to the Jedi somehow they may have been killed in the Purge, as it had hardly ended in medical examiners and familial notifications, but an ordinary family shouldn’t have been effected by the goings on at the temple. And yet she searched among Jedi records, not Imperial ones.  


“So, who are they? And who are they to you?”  


Kylo turned back to the video of the woman he’d installed next door. She had cut the lights, but the recording devices still showed her clearly. Darkness was no obstacle to his observation. Her eyes were open, staring at nothing in the pure, undiluted black of her room. She looked exhausted, tangled hair still caught under the jacket she hadn’t taken off, an expression on her face that felt terribly familiar. But she didn’t cry. She just closed her eyes and tried to fall asleep, not easing out of the tight circle she’d pulled herself into.  


An idea came to him, prompting him to bring up an image of Ardorellia. He hadn’t looked terribly closely, but the satellite pictures appeared to match the shape of the continents on the necklace she’d said was her homeworld. His early attempts to find out where she’d come from hadn’t proved fruitful, but perhaps the answers to her origins were here. He typed her name into the registry, narrowing the results to the Ardorellian records. Unlike the Surros family, nothing at all came back for her. It was another dead end.  


When he’d first decided to bring her here it was as a tool, a new approach to find the whereabouts of Luke Skywalker, but now there was a mystery surrounding her, too. She’d already proven herself to be badly behaved, wasting no time in moving on her own agenda, yet somehow it didn’t bother him. It was amusing. She was unlike the fanatic loyalists of the First Order or the Resistance. Their goals he understood - they weren’t far from his own - but hers were still unclear. He didn’t understand her yet.  


For the first time since the disaster with the scavenger, he was interested in something other than the straightforward agenda of the First Order. He felt stirrings of intrigue, eagerness for the mystery Norah presented. It made him realise how bored he’d become with the repetition of daily life aboard the _Finalizer_. Everything was the same, with only brief diversions in the form of forays into enemy territory. There was no challenge, and what little conflicts there were came strictly in the form of physical altercation or his little tiffs with Hux. It required nothing of his mind. He wasn’t needed - any strong fighter with an intimidating figure could fill in and produce the same results. He wanted more. He wanted a challenge. Something worthy of the Master of the Knights of Ren.  


The sleeping figure on the monitor stirred slightly, catching his eye with her movement. She was already in his power, but her behaviour showed she wasn’t yet under his control. And she was certainly hiding something from him. It would be an enjoyable diversion, one that didn’t take away from his responsibilities, to figure her out. Once he understood her he could control her, and then he could make best use of her. That was an acceptable reason for the interest. Even the Supreme Leader would approve of him finding the best way to manage his resources. That is, if he asked.


	20. Ablutions

### Ablutions

###  Norah

The first night in the room, Norah had been too exhausted to do anything but curl up on the bed and sleep. Even the strange presence on the other side of the wall wasn’t enough to keep her awake. Her dreams were confusing, snatches of memory from real life contrasted with dark fantastical imagery. When she finally woke for the day there was nothing left of them but a sense of fear and of people chasing her. A hint of the disappointment that had carried her to bed remained, but a night’s sleep had eased her sense of futility. With a new day there were chances for new results, new promise.  


Lying in the bed, she called for the lights, and watched the room reappear from the darkness. Staring at the ceiling, she thought on the bizarre encounter of the night before and what she’d agreed to do. A broad smile stretched over her face at the memory of what she’d gotten in return. The entire Jedi Archive, effectively destroyed outside of what had been preserved in the Imperial Archive, was hers. After everything she’d been through to get little snatches and pieces of it, the closest thing to the full and complete records of the Jedi that still existed were at her disposal.  


Lurching out of bed, and ignoring the excruciating ache that followed as best she could, Norah stood. The room was immaculate, and its tidiness made her feel even more of a mess. Her hair was a snarl of mats and tangles, and her skin was covered in a layer of grime. She felt as if she’d been dipped in a rank mud puddle and left there for days. It wasn’t terribly far from the truth. She pulled the borrowed uniform off and let it fall at her feet. Before she could even think about getting to work she needed to be clean.  


The bathroom had its own shower unit, another luxury she was being afforded on Kylo Ren’s largess. It had been fully stocked, with more types of cleansers than she’d had access to in years. The mental image of Ren in his helmet and cowl deliberately setting out shampoos and soaps for her set her to hysterical laughter. He did seem the fastidious type. She started to unwind the long coiling bandage from around her arm but it stuck to her skin and the idea of tearing it off was unbearable. Thinking, _The water will loosen it_ , she stepped into the unit.  


Leaning against the cool tile of the shower wall, she closed her eyes and kicked on the water as hot as it would let her. Turning to let it pour over her face and through her hair, she relaxed under the spray. The heat helped with the stiff ache in her chest, and after a few minutes she could use her arm well enough to actually wash. The arm still wouldn’t go higher than her chest, though if she kept her elbow low she could bring her hand up as high as her face, so she had to work on her hair one-handed. A quiet warning tone began to chime after some time, and the hot water started to cool down as she used up whatever allotment she’d had. There was barely enough time to finish rinsing off before it turned shockingly cold, which wouldn’t have stopped her if it hadn’t immediately caused her damaged muscles to start seizing up again.  


The mirror had fogged up during her ablutions, so she wiped a space clear with her hand, seeing a version of herself that looked like it had been through hell. Her bedraggled reflection sported dark circles under darker eyes, and even after having been washed her hair seemed to be some kind of forest creature’s nest. She started in on it with her fingers before giving up and taking up the comb she’d been provided. Twice it seemed to jump out of her right hand before she gave up and changed to the left. The comb’s narrow teeth caught the red curls, already twisting around each other, fighting every minute stroke. Before she could get half-way through the mess her chest was burning from the effort and three of the comb’s teeth had snapped. She threw the the offending thing into the sink, listening to it rattle and bounce against the chrome basin.  


Norah looked up at herself in the mirror, seeing her own frustration reflected back at her. The edge of the bandage on the top of her shoulder caught her eye, bringing her attention down to the injury she hadn’t seen before. Carefully unwinding the sodden material, she watched as a mass of pink-brown marks emerged from beneath. Long, branching lines trailed over her arm from the edge of her collar bone all the way down the back of her hand to the base of her fingers. They split over and over, spreading like feathers or the veins on a leaf. It was almost beautiful for a gigantic, hideous, debilitating injury.  


“It kind of looks like a fern,” she said aloud, before breaking into sobs.  


Automatically bringing her right hand to her mouth, she watched the reflected movement reveal more and more of the mark. It poured down her arm, bigger and more noticeable than she’d imagined. The odd pink shade stood out against her pale skin. There was no way anyone would miss it. She turned to look over her shoulder at her back, seeing tendrils of it there, too. A nearly circular patch of skin on the back of her shoulder seemed to define the beginning of the mark, while a matching spot on her wrist showed - more or less - where it terminated. Norah brushed a finger over the spot on her wrist, noting the skin there felt thicker and less sensitive, scar tissue from whatever surgery they’d done after the initial shock. The tendrils themselves felt raw to the touch, like it had been moments instead of days since the injury. She hated to think how much more hideous it would have been without the accelerated healing from the regeneration serum.  


Unable to stand looking at it any more, she ran out of the bathroom and began tearing open the four drawers set in the wall by her bed. Empty space after empty space appeared and disappeared as she jerked them out of place and slammed them closed again, apart from the one Ren had taken her necklace from. A metallic rattle sounded as she pulled the drawer open, revealing a treasure trove of jewelry. Her jewelry, to be precise. Every piece she’d been wearing on Arjanaz was there, gold and silver and precious stones, all returned to her without a word. Despite everything she’d been through, everything they’d done to her, Ren had given her back what little she had left to call her own. A lesser man wouldn’t have returned these things, she knew, and a regular officer of the First Order probably wouldn’t have even been able to. It didn’t seem like the kind of policy they’d have, to keep and ultimately return personal effects of former prisoners. But he’d given them back to her, without being asked, simply because he could, and for that she was grateful.  


Carefully putting on each item, feeling little pieces of herself returning with each one, Norah began to calm. The familiar sensations - the barely-noticeable weight of earrings or the way each ring seemed to slide back to a natural groove on her fingers - all anchored her, making her feel like herself again. The only odd item was the hair pin she'd found on Arjanaz, which she set back in the drawer. Bedecked in her last remaining possessions and nothing else, she turned to the only part of the room she hadn’t looked inside. The door to Ren’s room was to her left now, but on the other side of the room was a matching door. Striding purposefully toward it, she hoped it was a closet and not a connecting door to some other officer’s room. If she was wrong they were about to get quite an eyefull.  


“Oh, thank the ancestors,” she breathed as she looked inside.  


A pair of uniforms, identical to the one she’d worn from the medbay, hung inside the locker. There were also a pair of boots, as perfectly pristine as one would expect from the First Order. Another set of drawers were set into the wall, this time revealing underwear, the plain black undershirts favoured beneath the uniform jacket, and more casual clothing she assumed were for either recreation time or bed. To her eye they seemed acceptable for either, but military etiquette might not agree. An access hatch for a laundry chute sat against the base of the wall. She didn’t know the expectation there, how often she’d be given new clothes or if she was stuck with the three sets they’d provided, but nothing was going to get her back into the one she’d worn from the medbay when she’d been so dirty, so she kicked it down the chute and watched it disappear.  


Eschewing the stiff uniform, she slipped into the other outfit they’d provided. The material was softer, even if it was all the same shade of black. The sleeveless cut of the top didn’t rub so much against the feathery mark on her arm, and for once comfort was allowed to trump modesty in that particular area. The First Order hadn’t provided anything to cover her hair with, which wasn’t an issue alone in her room but sooner or later she was going to need to eat. Her stomach growled in response to the idea of food. Attempting to wrap one of the long-sleeved undershirts around her hair in a sloppy but acceptable covering, she wondered how she was supposed to go about actually getting it.  


As if conjured by the thought, a chime sounded at the door, surprising her enough that she lost her grip on the makeshift scarf and it came apart in her hand. For a moment she thought it would be Ren, but then she realised that he wouldn’t come through the hallway. And he probably wouldn’t bother to ask for entry. Glancing at the connecting door, Norah wondered if he would come again that day. He didn’t strike her as the patient type, so it was possible he’d be checking up on her all the time, pressing for her to find the temple he sought.  


The chime sounded again, and she hurried to answer it, keeping her left side forward and hiding the right as best as possible. A white-helmeted stormtrooper stood outside, waiting for her. Pushing down an automatic fear response, she attempted a small smile and said, “Hello.”  


“I’ve been instructed to bring you to the officers mess, ma’am.” The voice was that of another woman, different from the one who’d brought her to her quarters the day before.  


Norah’s shoulder throbbed, still hurting from her attempt to detangle her hair, worse for the effort required to dress. She couldn’t imagine what the stormtrooper in pristine armour thought of the messy display she presented. Holding the shirt in her hand, she contemplated walking the long distance to the medbay with her snarled hair on display yet again. It didn’t matter whether or not the stormtroopers that passed by actually cared what it looked like, or that they were ignorant to her culture and customs. She didn’t want them to see it, and that meant she needed to cover it, which was not something she was capable of doing at the moment. Glancing past the stormtrooper to see if she had a partner, and seeing none, Norah shook her head at what she was considering.  


“Can I ask you a favour?”  


“A favour?” the stormtrooper replied, a bit puzzled by the question.  


“My arm isn’t working very well right now,” Norah replied, turning to display the visual evidence. A tiny movement of the other woman’s helmet told her that the mark was as ugly as she feared. Ignoring the stab of discomfort at the thought, she added, “I can’t seem to get my hair under control. Can you help me out? I know it’s kind of a weird thing to ask a stranger, but it’s really bad.”  


The trooper seemed to be considering the request, so Norah pressed, “Please? I could really use the help.”  


She wasn’t sure if politeness would work on a stormtrooper. Her only encounters with them had been at best impersonal and at worst, well, that’s what got her here.  


The soldier finally replied, “I’m really just supposed to escort you to the mess.”  


“It won’t take that long. I just need some help brushing out the last of these tangles and tying it up. I can’t do it by myself,” she said, hating to admit it. Shrugging her shoulder, she added, “Believe me, I tried.”  


“All right, but we have to be really fast. We’re expected shortly.”  


“Thank you!” Norah exclaimed, jumping back to let the other woman inside and turning to get the comb. It was a terrible tool to use on hair like hers but it was all she had.  


The stormtrooper still stood just inside the door, looking decidedly out of place for what Norah had asked, in her brilliant white armour. Handing over the comb, Norah considered the best way to proceed. Before she could move, the trooper said, “Look, I could get in a lot of trouble for this, so you can’t tell anyone I came in here.”  


“Of course not. Who would I tell?” she asked, almost laughing.  


Pointing in a general way to the room adjacent to her own, the trooper drawled, “Kylo Ren. Everyone knows those are his quarters.”  


“Yeah, I guess that would be a concern,” Norah said, realising how stupid her question had been. “But I have no reason to tell him anything about it, especially when you’re doing me a favour. I really can’t do it myself.”  


The other woman stayed where she was, not moving from where she’d planted herself. Trying to diffuse some of her tension, Norah said, “I’m Norah, by the way. What’s your name?”  


“MA-1616.”  


“I’m sorry?”  


“My designation is MA-1616.”  


“So, is that what I call you? Em-Ay-One-Six-One-Six?”  


The trooper tipped her head as if resigning herself, and lifted her hands to her helmet. The face underneath was lovely, with warm, brown skin, and wide, dark eyes. A hint of a smile played at the corner of her full mouth, as if she was laughing at herself for making such a dangerous choice. A thick, silky braid curved back along her head, disappearing into the neck of her armour. She was much, much younger than Norah had expected. Her voice didn’t sound so hard outside of the helmet, more like the teenager she was, as she said, “They call me Center. I guess you can call me that, too. Just don’t call me ‘Sixteen’. I hate that.”  


“Thank you for helping me, Center.”  


“Sit down,” the girl ordered, pulling out the chair from the computer terminal.  


Norah obeyed, watching her in the dull reflection on the screen. The armour stood out plainly, the white plastoid material catching the light enough to show up even on the dark surface. Norah felt the girl’s skilled fingers start to tease out the snarls from her damp hair, starting from the bottom and quickly working her way up.  


“You shouldn’t do this when it’s wet. It’ll break more and you’ll ruin the curl,” the stormtrooper chided.  


“I know. I wouldn’t normally,” she replied, eyes closing automatically as pleasure rolled down from her scalp. Even with the sharp pangs from the occasional difficult tangle, having someone touching her hair felt incredible. She couldn’t even remember the last time anyone else had done this for her, it had been so long.  


Norah could hear a smile in Center’s voice as she said, “One of my squaddies does that, too. As soon as I start doing her hair she turns into a ring-cat, just closes her eyes and goes boneless. Practically starts purring.”  


“You do each other’s hair?” Norah managed through the bliss.  


“Sometimes. I mean, some don’t like it and won’t let you, but most do. First Order doesn’t let us grow it like yours, though,” the girl added, envy clear in her voice.  


“I can imagine. Regulations and all that.”  


“They just don’t want anyone being too different,” the girl replied defiantly.  


“Different?”  


“The Order wants to ensure that every stormtrooper is cohesive with the whole. If you stray beyond acceptable bounds in any way, including personal grooming, it shows that you don’t fit with the rest of your unit. You have to be able to fit into any role you are needed to fill. If you don’t, you might let your unit down. But when we take care of each other, it helps us to work together. That’s why they don’t mind us doing this for each other. It’s a form of bonding, which helps with squad cohesion,” she said, sounding as if she were spilling trade secrets.  


Center’s fingers made quick work of the curls, swiftly running them into a simple braid like her own. Norah almost wanted to protest that she’d stopped, to ask her to undo the braid and do it again, but she kept her mouth shut.  


“There. I don’t know how well it’s going to stay. I don’t have anything to secure it,” the stormtrooper said, stepping back to admire her handiwork. “It’s so long.”  


Feeling with her left hand, Norah gripped the end of the braid easily, giving it a gentle tug to show off the length. When she looked over her shoulder at the other woman, she saw a smile matching her own.  


"In the drawer on the wall, there's a stick you can use to pin it."  


In an instant, the stormtrooper retrieved the ornament and secured the braid in a neat coil. Finally feeling put-together, Norah turned to face her and said, "Thank you for that.”  


Center shrugged, but a pleased expression stayed on her face. Norah wondered why someone so young would be a stormtrooper, but felt it better not to ask. Holding out the long-sleeved shirt, she asked, “Can you use this to cover it?”  


“If you want,” the girl replied dubiously, quickly creating a far more effective turban than Norah’s original attempt. “There, now you’re invisible.”  


Norah laughed, tilting her head to test how secure the shirt was sitting. It didn’t budge, causing the girl to remark, “I know how to make a wrap. You think _my_ hair looks like this by accident?”  


“You are definitely more talented at this than I am. I usually just kind of throw something loose over it, but this is impressive.”  


“I try. We really do need to get going, though. They’re going to be wondering what’s taking so long,” Center said, letting a hint of unease creep into her tone.  


“Don’t worry. If anyone asks I’ll make sure they know I held us up.”  


Relief flashed over the girl’s face. She almost looked like a child, getting a reprieve from some expected consequence, only this ‘child’ was a trained soldier. The contrast was disorienting.  


“Are you ready?”  


“Just one thing,” Norah said, quickly walking into the bathroom to peek at the mirror. A tiny bit of red framed the edges of her face, but the black fabric covered the rest, sharply contrasting with her pale skin. Center had tied the shirt in a way that made it look like something meant for this purpose. It was surprisingly flattering, almost like a crown, especially with the glints of metal and gemstones on her ears. Norah smiled, seeing the reflection echo her. She liked the way it looked, and for the first time since her arrival on the ship she actually felt good. She felt like _herself_.  


Center appeared behind her in the mirror, her lovely features quizzical and expectant.  


“Just being vain,” Norah joked, turning toward the girl.  


“Be vain on your own time,” she replied, a dimple showing as she smiled. “Let’s go.”  


Throwing a uniform jacket loosely around her shoulders to cover her bare arms, ignoring the look the stormtrooper gave her at the action, Norah said, “Lead the way.”


	21. Mess

### Mess

### Norah

The trip from Norah’s quarters to the mess was uneventful, with Center falling more or less silent as soon as her helmet was back in place. The girl led her with minimal direction through the warren of corridors. Outside of Norah’s room, she was the picture of stormtrooper professionalism, lacking the friendly, feisty personality she’d allowed to peek through in private. Norah wondered if the girl would be a regular fixture in her new life, or if this one time was the only occasion where their paths would intersect. Hoping for the former, she walked eagerly toward the smell of food. Center stood at the door, not entering herself, as Norah headed inside.  


The mess was plush and comfortable, speaking to the importance of the officers that frequented it. Norah was relieved to see no one else inside as they entered. Having the young stormtrooper give her funny looks for the messy manner in which she wore their uniform was one thing, but receiving it from an actual officer, especially one who had the authority to dine on this level, that was different.  


A computer on the far side of the wall received her order, dispensing hot, fresh-looking food to her specifications. Taking her tray to the nearest table, positioned so she could watch the door, Norah dug in. For weeks she’d been living on little more than simple Arjaxi fare and occasionally some reconstituted dry goods bought from Hamerian vendors with an interest in ‘foreign delicacies’. In the medbay she’d been eating the same synthsust rations she assumed the soldiers were given. This, on the other hand, was something else. This was _good food_.  


Closing her eyes to enjoy the flavour of her steaming hot breakfast, complete with eggs and meat, paired with icy cold Tekara tea that tasted as if it had come straight off the Oridian Plateau, she hummed in delight. This was what she’d been missing out in the hinterlands - the taste of civilization. The officers of the ship, whatever it was called, were well fed.  


“Enjoying yourself?”  


The voice, harsh with the now-familiar sound of the mask it emanated from, startled her out of her reverie. Ren stood at the other side of her table, watching her behind his blank, chrome-edged helmet. Suddenly unsure if she’d made a mistake by ordering the food, Norah set down her fork and tried to swallow what had become a dense mouthful of stone. She hadn’t heard him enter, and he certainly hadn’t been in the room when she came in.  


“I’m sure it’s been some time since you’ve had a meal,” he prodded, taking a seat in front of her. “Eat.”  


Wary, she took a drink, watching him over the rim of her cup. He had no food of his own, and she wondered if he was planning on bringing something to his room or if he was going to unmask himself and eat in front of her. That, in turn, made her wonder what he looked like under the helmet. She tried imagining a face to go to the voice. Part of her could almost imagine that there wasn’t a face, that he didn’t need food at all because he was actually a synthetic of some kind, but she rejected that idea immediately. Synthetics, even the truly impressive ones, didn’t _feel_ like he did. They certainly didn’t behave thoughtfully, or provide luxurious accommodations to prisoners-turned-whatever she was to him. He was still staring at her, waiting for her to continue her meal.  


“Is it all right that I’m in here?” she asked, feeling out of place.  


“I had you brought here.”  


“Right,” Norah said, processing the statement. “Is this where I’m supposed to eat? Like, every time?”  


He nodded, asking, “Do you like your food?”  


Feeling no reason to lie, she replied, “It’s wonderful. I haven’t tasted food this good since I headed into the Deep Core.”  


Something about him, his carriage perhaps, told her the comment pleased him. It was strange, having him attentive to simple things like her need for food or shelter, when everything she’d heard about him was dangerous, cruel, cold, or violent. He’d destroyed her droid without a thought, but he’d clearly made some kind of effort where she was concerned. There was no chance he was this way with everyone. Norah wondered how long it would last, since it clearly hinged on her being able to find what he wanted. Hoping to head off the inquiry, she said, “I haven’t started working, yet.”  


“I know. You will after this.”  


“I guess I should eat faster, then,” she replied, trying to find the edges of his expectation.  


He seemed content to watch her, not telling her to change her pace either way. It was strange eating in front of him, with so much attention focused on her, but it was tolerable. He wasn’t demanding, not doing anything at all but watching. Feeling self-conscious at the brief flashes of skin under the jacket as she moved her arms, Norah wondered if he could see the marks, if he knew what they were. It was silly, wondering what he was thinking, if he cared at all or if he was just waiting for her to finish so he could do whatever it was he did on the ship. He gave her nothing, so she filled the silence with her thoughts.  


Nothing about Ren seemed to imply that he cared about trivial things like that - about the vulnerability of her position or her hyper-awareness of her own bare limbs and the disfiguring mark that stood out across so much of her skin. But she’d known men who had seemed like that before only to have them turn out to think they were owed something from her simply due to her proximity. Usually, they expected something physical, almost always sexual. Not once had she allowed them to lay a hand on her, putting some sharply in their place, walking away from others and cutting them completely out of her life without a word, even breaking a finger or two where needed.  


Ren wasn’t the kind one could walk away from, and breaking his fingers didn’t seem likely. He was powerful, both physically and in his position with the First Order. He could play the part of benevolent caretaker, or whatever his game was, but they both knew he effectively owned her. She’d been in that position before. She hadn’t given in then, and she wouldn’t now.  


Seemingly unaware of the turn of her thoughts, Ren sat silent. She almost wanted him to touch her mind this one time to see her resolute position on the subject. If he thought he was going to get something out of her or get his hands on her just because he’d put her in a nice room and given her a good meal he was going to be sadly disappointed. Force user or not, she wasn’t that kind of girl.  


He stood abruptly when she finished the last bite, apparently ready for her to get to work. Feeling petty but enjoying it, she took her time to finish the drink, making him wait until she was done. Clearly he knew what she was doing, she could hear it in his voice as he said, “Are you ready now?”  


Smiling sweetly, she replied, “Very. Thank you.”  


Bringing her tray back to the reclamation window, she followed him out. Memorizing the route to and from her room wouldn’t be difficult, maybe another trip or two and she was sure she’d be able to get there by herself, his restriction that she be escorted notwithstanding. With Center at her heels, she jogged a few steps to catch up with the imposing, black-clad man. He hadn’t slowed for her, expecting her to keep up much as the stormtroopers had the day before.  


When she reached his side she realised she’d never stood next to him before. He’d always been on his feet and she’d been below him, apart from the brief moment on the planet when she’d challenged him. Even then he’d been too far to effectively gauge his height, but now they stood fairly close together. He was even taller than Corddray, absolutely towering over her and seemingly oblivious to the difference.  


_I’ve always liked tall men._  


The unexpected thought jolted her, forcing her to push it away. Ren was not the kind of man to think about like that, and even had he been the situation itself made it unacceptable.  


“You’ll be escorted to eat three times a day, or you may have your escort bring your food to your room instead. Colonel Corddray will also summon you from time to time, but the rest of your time is to be spent working,” he suddenly intoned. “As I said, I expect results. The First Order has waited long enough to deal with the Jedi problem.”  


Norah noticed how stiffly he carried himself as he spoke, fists clenched and held tightly just away from his sides. He radiated barely contained energy, especially at the mention of the Jedi. Glancing over her shoulder to Center’s unreadable helmet, she wondered if the stormtrooper noticed it as well, or if she was too consumed with her fear of him to see it. The girl gave her nothing, marching silently behind them as if accompanying Kylo Ren-and-guest was part of her usual duties.  


An officer approached, coming from the other direction with his head down, peering into a datapad as he walked. She wasn’t sure if he saw Ren in his peripheral vision, or if he somehow sensed his presence, but as they closed in his head jerked up. The haughty expression native to the officers of the First Order melted into one of distaste and fear. Norah watched the shift, fascinated to see how viscerally he reacted to the black-clad man. His proud carriage collapsed in on itself, and he shifted as if to give as wide a berth possible without actually clinging to the wall.  


She was amused by his cringing, doglike attitude until his gaze moved past the Force user, looking her up and down in an instant and finding her wanting. All the dislike for Ren transformed into a smarmy kind of judgment directed at her. Suddenly self-conscious again in her borrowed uniform, she straightened the jacket draped over her shoulders and moved closer to Ren. She wasn’t afraid to trade on his status when it informed her own. The officer seemed to understand the implied message - that she was with Ren, whatever that meant, and therefore should be afforded a measure of that fear by proxy. He dropped his gaze back to the datapad to hide his thoughts, scuttling past them in a rush.  


Ren himself seemed unaware of the exchange, or of the officer’s presence at all. He carried on his march without another word, long legs quickly eating up the distance between the mess and the hall to their respective rooms. When they reached the near end of the corridor he stopped, turning his mask toward Norah again.  


“I will check on your progress later in the day. You will have results.”  


“I’ll do my best,” she replied, holding back that she couldn’t possibly tell when she’d have something for him yet. He didn’t seem the type to take that kind of honesty well.  


Taking his leave without another word, he turned and walked off in another direction, leaving Norah and Center to finish their journey to her door without him. Raising her eyebrows at the girl, Norah shook her head and went on.


	22. Bridge

### Bridge

###  Kylo

Kylo continued toward the bridge, leaving his quarters and his _guest_ behind. She was an extremely provoking creature, pushing limits at every turn, failing to give the proper respect. It was one of her more amusing qualities, along with her plain enjoyment of creature comforts, not for anyone’s benefit but her own, sincere in her appreciation of small things. She’d spent the entire meal evaluating him as much as he did her. Her expression had turned inquisitive, resolute, and a charming sort of defiant in turn, but her thoughts were harder to decipher without actually using the Force to probe her mind. He still hesitated to employ that ability, particularly where it wasn’t required. It was a lazy way to read her, anyway. There was no challenge to puzzling her out if he was going to simply peer inside her thoughts.  


She had more nerve than half the officers aboard the ship. She stared at him boldly, openly contemplating him, and still she showed no fear. There was wariness, certainly, but she wasn’t afraid of him like others were. The fear of the First Order’s personnel amused him, but Norah’s refusal or inability to fall in line that way was oddly refreshing. She knew who and what he was - he’d noted her observation of the lightsaber - but she wasn’t afraid. He didn’t understand why not. Even her rage over his destruction of her droid seemed to have faded to insignificance. She seemed more interested in navigating her new position than holding on to feelings that didn’t help her.  


He’d made mistakes with Rey. He knew that. He’d pushed her too hard, taken too much, too fast from her. Or perhaps he hadn’t gone far enough, fast enough. It was difficult to tell. He’d only had her in his grasp for such a short time. It grated that he hadn’t been able to convince her to join him, and part of him was certain that if it hadn’t been for the interference of the traitor and Solo he would have broken her eventually, but for the time being she was out of his reach.  


He wouldn’t make the same mistakes again. Norah was alone, completely reliant on him, and he was certain she would be useful. He could feel it with the certainty of the Force. He just had to tread carefully with her for now, use a gentler touch than came naturally. She wasn’t like Rey, and no one was coming to rescue her, so she wasn’t going anywhere. She wasn't hampered with blind idealism. No one had planted ideas in her head about fighting him. Rey had already been infected with the touch of insurrection before he’d even met her. Norah offered a challenge, not a fight.  


Entering the bridge, Kylo saw the ripples of awareness shift among the crew. The slightly wide eyes flitting in his direction and back to their work, or resolutely focusing on their consoles as if they didn’t know he was there, the indrawn breath of apprehension, the tightening posture, all of it radiated out in front of him. Normally it was enough to bring a touch of a smile, hidden behind the mask they all feared, but after Norah’s lack of reaction it didn’t provide the usual thrill.  


At the end of the bridge was a wide viewscreen, made up of many triangular sections, revealing the inky black of space and thousands of white streaks as the ship flew past stars. Hux stood in front of the window, hands braced behind his back, his orange hair the only pop of colour among the darkness. Kylo strode to the general’s side, observing the way the other man watched the stars as if they belonged to him. It was a laughable thought. Hux had barely managed to keep his position after the failure at Starkiller Base. He was lucky to still have a ship under his command at all.  


“I see you’ve finally made it to the bridge. We expected you some time ago, but then I suspect your bed was more comfortable last night than previously,” the general sniped, still looking out at the stars.  


Instant rage flowed through Kylo. Of course the general had been fully aware of the remodel - it was his ship, after all - and the removal of the former prisoner to her new quarters, but to imply that there was such a base, prurient reason for the move was intolerable. Turning to face the general, Kylo nearly employed his abilities on the arrogant face, but the hint of a smile playing at the corner of Hux’s mouth stopped him. He was needling to provoke just such a reaction, playing their game as always. He wanted to bring out the rage.  


“Actually,” Kylo replied, forcing his fury down to irritation, “it was breakfast.”  


“Breakfast?” the general asked, surprised enough at the failure to get the expected reaction to look at the dark lord.  


Searching for the precise words Norah had used, Kylo echoed her, “It was ‘wonderful’.”  


Shock turned the already-pale general an unhealthy shade of white, making his pale orange hair stand out even more sharply. Matching brows drew together as he attempted to puzzle out the barb in the answer, looking for insults out of sheer expectation. Kylo stood silent, letting Hux work himself into his own anger.  


“Well,” the general sputtered, still looking for a way to turn the conversation back in his favour, “if you’re quite done lazing over the table, and you’re ready to actually serve the interests of the First Order, we’ll be arriving at the Resistance planet shortly.”  


The weak insult was as good as if Kylo had one-upped him again and they both knew it. Playing at magnanimity, he replied, “I am, as always, ready to serve the will of the Supreme Leader.”  


“Yes. Good. You may meet your team in the launch bay,” Hux stated, not quite able to try and make it an order. He knew it wouldn’t go unanswered if he did.  


“Very well,” Kylo replied, turning as if to walk away before dropping the next insult. “Hopefully your men have gotten the intelligence right and we won’t be chasing down amateur archaeologists again.” The general’s unhealthy paleness pinked instantly, an ugly flush running up his neck to his cheeks. His eyes were dangerously bright, lit with his own anger. “Don’t worry, General,” Kylo continued, “I won’t allow their failures to prevent our victory.”  


“My men are the picture of loyalty, Ren,” Hux spat, barely able to contain himself, “and _they_ don’t get distracted by ‘amateur archaeologists’, no matter how _nubile_ they might be.”  


Cocking his head slightly, Kylo watched the other man near the point of snapping something that couldn’t be taken back. It was deeply fulfilling to see him brought so close to losing control. An unfortunate awareness of the eyes on them stopped him from pushing the general that last little bit. It was too dangerous to the crew if they should see their general snap. The First Order couldn’t afford the kind of drop in morale that would cause, and for all that he could be an infuriating opponent Hux was a good and loyal officer. It was bad enough the crew were shown the cracks in the relationship between the two men who gave them their orders. It was tempting, though, particularly with the recurring attacks relating to Norah, impugning his own honour.  


“That’s not the word I’d use for her,” he replied dryly, hearing the modulated voice make it that much colder.  


Biting out his words from between clenched teeth, the ginger-haired general said, “I’m sure there are others.”  


The ship suddenly decelerated, streaks of stars fading into millions upon millions of pinpricks of light as the _Finalizer_ exited hyperspace. They had come out at the far end of the target solar system, en route to its sole habitable world. A pretty, blue and white planet appeared, barely bigger than the stars at first, then rapidly growing in size as the ship came closer. The bridge crew moved faster, smoother, with an electric current of excitement underpinning their movements. An ensign piped up from a terminal set into the floor trench, speaking to his overseer but with enough volume to carry, “Coming into range of the planet Iavus.”  


“It appears we’ve arrived,” Hux said needlessly, tipping his head in the direction of the window. “Perhaps you should attend to your duty.”  


It was a difficult one to reply to without reigniting Hux’s anger at a level that would be difficult to navigate. His own inclination to snap back about his awareness of duty wouldn’t be enough to win the battle of words between them, and no matter how close he’d brought the other man to snapping it would be too easy to lose on the final word. And he wasn’t going to lose. Inspiration struck in the form of Hux’s own insults. He wasn’t sure if his opponent could hear the smile through the modulator as he replied, “If I find a ‘nubile’ Resistance agent I’ll be sure to bring her straight to you. It seems like you could use the ‘distraction’.”  


Hux glared, working up his rebuttal, but Kylo cut him off before he could formulate it. Turning on his heel, he left the general to stare daggers at his back. Pleased at the result of the confrontation, he headed for the launch bay and his ship. After beating Hux so soundly it would be easy to take down a small Resistance cell.


	23. Archive

### Archive

### Norah

Norah sat down at the terminal for the second time, ready to begin doing what she had agreed, at least for now. She had to learn how to search through the Jedi records, seeking out the oldest entries possible, and sift through them for mentions of temples and holy sites. It had taken weeks with A4’s help to do the same to only a small fragment of the archive before she located Arjanaz, but this time she had no droid to simplify things, and a much larger amount of information to hunt through. The previous experience told her how to start, and even what to look for, but that only did so much. Opening a random personal log, from a Jedi who’d written it many millennia before, Norah leaned in to read the account of a mission.  


_‘We have completed our assignment on Kurubos. We arrived without incident at the Kalagan outpost, where the natives greeted us eagerly. They’d been experiencing some difficulty with the large, carnivorous beasts called trungas. Four children have been confirmed to have been taken by the creatures back to their lairs, presumably as meals. While an adult Kurubosan would be too large for the beasts, a child is unfortunately quite easily taken.  
_

_‘My padawan and I tracked the trungas to the caverns at Otoshai, confirmed the deaths of the children from the remains inside, and discovered the reason for the trungas suddenly beginning to attack the villagers. It seems that the Kurubosans rerouted and dammed the river to provide themselves with an irrigation system for their crops, but the artificial lake it caused flooded the valley and forced the prey animals to leave, in turn forcing the trungas out of their territory to hunt for large enough food. Had the Kurubosans not damaged the food chain with their dam, the trungas would not have come for their young out of desperation. Unfortunately, the damage was too extensive by the time we arrived to simply take down the dam and return the prey animals to their native habitat, giving the predators no more reason to hunt for easy meals in the villages, and we were forced to clean out the trungas from the caverns. It was extremely disheartening to have to kill these semi-intelligent animals because of actions taken by others, but once they realised the Kurubosan children were an easy prey-substitute we had no choice._  


_‘In an attempt to use this experience to teach my padawan about the delicate nature of balance, and therefore the Force, I took her to the shrine-on-the-mountain, to contemplate the villager’s actions and the results it had on the innocent lives affected, including their own children. She did not seem to understand why we should bother even trying to find another solution to the problem, too eager to use her newly crafted lightsaber on the “dangerous beasts”, rather than seeking to find another way, a less violent path, or to understand why we were forced to engage in violence in the end. I would have preferred to find another route, particularly given her propensity to use brute force rather than seeking alternatives. I am concerned by her lack of empathy.’_  


Norah noted the name of the planet and the title ‘shrine-on-the-mountain’, looking it up in the Imperial planetary database. It seemed the little world Kurubos had been the victim of an unstable star, burned to ashes over five millennia ago. No traces of the native Kurubosans, let alone trungas, had been noted since. With the destruction of their world, both species had ceased to exist, as had whatever Jedi shrine they harboured. It wasn’t a failure, since she’d located something, even if it was gone. The Jedi had been around for a long time, and engaged in many conflicts, so most of what was left of them would be similar to this - shattered remnants of a bygone era.  


She continued in this vein for hours, reading snatches of mission logs, intelligence reports, personal diaries, whatever she flitted to. Each time another planet, another temple, or another site was added to the list. She had an uncanny knack for finding entries with mentions of temples or shrines or academy sites. The only times she didn’t add a new name to the list was when another entry mentioned one she’d already noted. These Jedi were far-travelled, passing from the Core to the Outer Rim without rhyme or reason. They were everywhere, all across space known and unknown. A surprising amount of what they mentioned in the oldest of entries was referred to as uncharted or wild space at the time, but long centuries of exploration had mapped and charted most of the things she could identify. Unfortunately, most of those had also been noted by the Empire during their extended hunting mission for the Jedi, and almost every name she found was also tied to a record of its destruction.  


Then came the first mention of the Ancient Seek.  


_‘I need to spend time realigning myself with peace, as this conflict has set me at odds with my own hold on the Light. I worry the heaviness creeping in along the edges of my heart is the corrupting presence of the Dark. I try to push it away but always I feel it return. Perhaps these most orthodox members of our Order will be able to strengthen my resolve. Their security in the Light has always calmed me, and given me an example to emulate. I will retire from battle for a brief sojourn to the hidden fortress of the Ancient Seek. This sacred place is so comforting, its ancient stone holding memories of my predecessors as if they sit beside me. I wish to be worthy of my place among them one day.’_  


There was no planetary name mentioned in the entry, nor in any of the ones that followed by the writer. Norah read through page after page of the Jedi’s account of some war or other, one of many that seemed to be happening simultaneously, but no other mention of the ‘Ancient Seek’ was forthcoming. There was something about the name that called to her. It seemed to reverberate through her, like a plucked string on a musical instrument, humming a gentle tone. Setting up the search parameters, she hunted through the Jedi Archive for more mentions of it.  


_‘The priests of the Seek are becoming more and more insular, turned too far inward to understand the challenges we face across the Galaxy. It is as if they think by hiding away from the fight it will not find them, that their purity of intention will shield them from our enemies. The rest of the Council seems to agree with my concerns, particularly Master Chari Jovas, and we have agreed to send a party to the island to speak with them. Their adherence to the Light is admirable, but we must use our abilities to protect those who need our aid. Turning away from righteous conflict is not the same as being above it. We cannot leave the innocent to suffer while we can do something about it.  
_

_‘I am also concerned their teachings are swaying the hearts of the young who are already having difficulty with their own internal mastery of the Force and their natural fear for their own safety. Many of them are too young for this work, but we have no other choice. It often feels like we are telling children to go and die for us. It is too tempting for them to hear “Step away from the battlefield. Do not engage in the fight. Fighting of any kind is the work of the Dark Side”, when already we struggle to keep the faith and muster those willing to do what it takes to defeat our enemy. Those who wield oppression and fear as their weapons are our true enemies, and we must stop them from inflicting any more harm. I will go myself to speak to these coward-priests of the Ancient Seek. I will not allow them to undermine the morale of those who take up arms to protect them.’_  


Adding ‘island’ to her notes, Norah continued to the next log that mentioned the name.  


_‘A raiding party has been spotted in a nearby system. We were alerted to their presence by the Ancient Seek, but the Jedi there refuse to engage them. They have decided it is against the path of the Light Side to fight, even if you are fighting for the sake of good, and have closed their doors to the war. The Jedi Council has censured them for their refusal, but no one expects any aid to come from that end now. We have been left to fight without our right hand. I don’t know how long we will be able to do this by ourselves. We are greatly outnumbered.’_  


Finding half a dozen more entries of a similar type, complaining about the inaction of the Seek without naming any other landmarks or planetary bodies that could be used to find it, Norah sat back in frustration. A4 had been so good at sifting through things like this, disregarding logs that didn’t add useful information and flagging those that could be helpful. The droid could simultaneously identify where star systems that matched descriptions were on galactic starcharts, or compile lists of likely targets. All the busywork was easily handled so she could focus on logistics. Without her companion she was forced to do it all herself, manually, searching for something to break through and tell her where this Ancient Seek actually was.  


The door chimed, drawing her away from the frustration of the work, but providing a welcome distraction. A stormtrooper stood there expectantly, looking at her from behind the same blank white mask as the others she’d met.  


“Are you ready for lunch?” Center asked, prompting a relieved smile from Norah.  


“I’m glad it’s you again. I don’t know how I’m supposed to tell you all apart,” she confessed.  


“Are you saying all stormtroopers look alike?” the girl asked saucily, unable to hold back a laugh at Norah’s expense.  


Rolling her eyes, she said, “If there are tricks you guys use to tell yourselves apart when you all wear the exact same armour, please let me know.”  


“That really would be telling.”  


Gesturing for Norah to follow, Center backed away from the door. Ready for a break from the tedium of sifting through the entire fragmented Jedi Archive for a few hints of something she could use, Norah followed her out.


	24. Raid

### Raid

### Kylo

The Resistance base was a small one, barely an outpost just inside the fringe of a swath of swampland. The tree canopy shielded it well enough that it took some time to find the precise location of the facility. The Resistance operatives’ transmitter dish had been hidden just under the surface of a small, artificial pond, thoroughly masking its presence. Once the First Order definitively located it a small orbital weapon could have destroyed the whole setup in an instant, but they wanted to capture the enemy agents and gain access to their equipment. They were valuable for what they might know, and hardly a threat needing to be vaporized. The little bog bunker was barely large enough to fit a small spacecraft and maybe a dozen agents. Iavus wasn’t a planet of note, but the cell operating here had drawn attention to themselves in a big way, directing and passing on massive amounts of data transmissions. It was a relay station, and an important one as far as the First Order could tell from the quantity of intercepted information.  


Preparations for the raid took longer than anticipated. The stormtroopers selected for the job were raw, barely out of training, and unblooded. Given the easy nature of the mission it seemed a perfect one to give them some experience in battle. Some of the troopers seemed over-eager to prove themselves, others hesitant and unsure. Kylo could feel the contrasting emotions buffeting him from both sides. One of the soldiers, believing himself on the cusp of glory, fumbled a thermal detonator, causing a severe halt as the explosive ordinance disposal specialists cleared the bay and evaluated the device.  


Kylo’s irritation grew more pronounced with each moment of delay, nearly causing him to lash out at one of the green troopers who couldn’t seem to settle his nerves. The anxiety from the soldier wore against the dregs of his own self-control, annoying and troubling him. The boy seemed to project his emotions like a loudspeaker. Once the grenade had been safely disposed of, per the handler’s findings, the clumsy trooper was severely reprimanded and held back to attend disciplinary reconditioning. Several wasted hours after their arrival in the star system, the transports were loaded up and the ships finally launched for the planet.  


Kylo took to his shuttle, following behind two troop transports. The last time he’d done this he’d come back with a complement of prisoners. He intended this to be no different, excepting that the prisoners would actually be enemies of the Order this time. The shuttle jostled a bit as it hit atmosphere, but otherwise the trip was smooth. Landing some ways back from the edge of the marsh, as the trees were too dense to permit them direct entry, the forces of the First Order assembled and prepared for engagement. Sitting safe within his ship, Kylo looked over the lines of white-armoured stormtroopers on his monitors, watching Phasma direct their movements, and waited for them to secure the compound. Their job was to go in first, take the incoming fire, subdue the enemy, and secure the building before he took to the field. It minimized risk to himself but in many ways that was why even excursions like this had become monotonous and routine.  


Within minutes the stormtroopers were in position surrounding the building, having disabled or destroyed the external sensors, ready to rush the facility. The place had a ramshackle feel to it from the outside, belying the importance of what lay within. Even the prefabricated design was old-fashioned, looking more like a relic from the previous wave of colonization efforts than something newly installed by the Resistance.  


“Perhaps it’s a holdover from the Rebellion,” Kylo mused aloud, drawing the attention of the nearest stormtrooper in his personal guard.  


Phasma shone like a beacon among the shadows beneath the trees, ordering her men to engage. The stormtroopers at the front rushed forward, packing explosives into the sole visible entrance and backing off quickly. There was a strong, contained explosion, blowing the door in on the Resistance agents hiding behind it, followed by a massive wave of stormtroopers pouring inside to secure the building. A few blaster shots rang out, but the radio chatter was minimal as the soldiers cleared the facility.  


In ones and twos, a few troopers reappeared, dragging or forcing out the enemy at gunpoint as they found them. The ragged, dirty agents were brought swiftly through the trees and pushed to their knees in a line between the troop transports. They were largely defiant, struggling against the troopers or loudly denouncing the Order, but once they were on their knees most of them fell quiet. A few trickles of blood from ears and noses spoke to the concussive power of the initial blast, but for the most part they were taken without difficulty. There wasn’t much resistance to the Resistance after all.  


Kylo kept tabs through his monitors as the troopers went about their work, observing all through the feeds both from his vessel and from the more powerful _Finalizer_ above. Phasma’s soldiers were ruthlessly efficient, bringing down the base in less time than it had taken them to reach the planet once they’d left the ship. He could see her pride in their capabilities in her calm direction. Despite the embarrassing incident on the ship, they did not let her down.  


As the line of operatives grew, a sudden explosion wracked the building. Half of the roof collapsed in an instant, falling down on nearly two dozen soldiers inside. Excited, frightened chatter filled the commlines.  


“What happened?”  


“Did the building just explode?”  


“-leg is off! It’s completely blown off!”  


“Was that us?”  


“It feels like I’m being crushed! I can’t move!”  


“Where is Helix? Does anyone see her?”  


“Clear the comms! Everyone clear the comms!”  


Panic dominated the tone as troopers above and below tried to handle the situation. Kylo silenced the feed of a soldier who could do nothing but scream.  


Phasma brusquely shoved one trooper in the direction of the prisoners, yelling, “Secure them!”, before running toward the smoking remains of the building herself. Attempting to take advantage of the distraction, one of the prisoners jumped for the stormtrooper’s rifle. Sensing their opportunity, the other five captives followed suit, attempting to overwhelm the lone soldier through sheer numbers. With everyone occupied by the explosion no one was listening to the call for backup.  


Kylo rushed to his feet, commanding his personal guard to follow. The Resistance operatives were climbing and pulling on the overwhelmed stormtrooper. He could barely keep his weapon in hand, let alone take the lot of them down. By the time the shuttle ramp descended his feet had slipped out from under him in the muck and the prisoners had him on his knees, echoing their posture of the moment before. Throwing out a surge of directed power, Kylo sent all six assailants flying in opposite directions. The stormtrooper sprang back up, sliding on the loose mud and looking around wildly, attempting to train his weapon on all of them at once.  


“Round them up!” Kylo commanded, sending his guard running to collect the fallen enemies before they could get up on their own.  


Smoke travelled on the breeze, but the stormtrooper helmets were equipped with filters to protect their users from such things. The bare-faced Resistance agents had no such protection, quickly finding their watery eyes and coughing a substantial liability in the fight. One female fighter tried to run, heading parallel with the tree line. Kylo let her get a few meters away before wrapping the Force around her like a vice and brutally yanking her back toward the trooper chasing her.  


“Take them to the transports and secure them,” he ordered, watching as one soldier bashed a defiant enemy in the teeth with the butt of their rifle.  


Another agent slipped out of the grip of the stormtrooper subduing him, bringing both fists against the back of the soldier’s helmet at just the right angle to stun them. He grabbed for the fallen trooper’s weapon, attempting to bring it bear against Kylo. A fiery desperation lit his eyes as he turned, searching through the haze for the black-clad figure. Kylo raised a hand, shoving the weapon backwards in the man’s arms, smashing it against his chest. He doubled over, desperately trying to breathe through the smoke and the pain of at least one broken rib. Kylo strode boldly across the marshy ground toward his ‘opponent’, side-stepping a trooper dragging a female captive by her hair, until he stood directly in front of the man. Red-rimmed eyes burned up at him, a wave of hate rolling off the enemy fighter.  


“Submit,” Kylo commanded. “You’ve lost.”  


Baring teeth in a combination of challenge and smile, the man replied, “Not yet, we haven’t.”  


He lunged, reaching out with both hands for Kylo’s neck. The lightsaber was in hand and activated without a thought, crackling red energy slicing through the air in a sharp line. Two lumps of flesh dropped to the ground, quickly followed by the man they’d been attached to. Arms abruptly terminating in blackened stumps failed to stop him from hitting the dirt face first. Kylo stared dispassionately down at his howling, writhing enemy. The last operatives who’d been struggling with stormtroopers suddenly lost their fight at the sight of their comrade screaming beside his freshly amputated hands. The soldiers did not go easier on them for their lack of resistance, efficiently and harshly bringing them down and forcing them back to the shuttles. The handless man was dragged across the grass by a firm grip on his collar, the stormtrooper deaf to his screams, blackened stumps unable to claw at the armoured hand pulling him inexorably on.  


The sounds of the soldiers trapped in the bunker returned to the forefront of Kylo’s attention now that the prisoners were properly contained. Phasma’s voice sounded clearly over the comms, calling down reinforcements from the Star Destroyer above, directing her troops to dig out their comrades, containing the fear and panic that played at the edges of the stormtroopers’ voices. Standing at the edge of the rubble, she snapped, “Brace the internal wall! If it shifts further it’ll bring the rest of the roof down!”  


Two troopers were already moving into position, anticipating her directives and meeting them before she finished the command. Others were actively digging out the nearest edge of the collapsed building, careful not to shift materials that were keeping more weight from coming down onto their brothers and sisters below. An armoured limb stretched out from beneath a massive piece of the heavy plastone wall, dust coating the slick material and obscuring the black body-stocking that peeked out from between white plates. Blood and gore came trickling out from the surrounding cracks, enough to prove that the soldier had been crushed to a pulp, apart from the extended arm.  


Kylo strode to the fringe of the rescue operation, reaching out with the Force to feel for live soldiers. The operations crew of his shuttle were still handling the comms, cutting off certain stormtroopers from the feed to prevent their screams and cries for help from disturbing the others, but a few were still calm enough to speak with something approaching rationality and remain actively talking to the rescuers. Phasma called for the stormtroopers inside to report in so they could tell how many were inside and still breathing.  


“This is Spoonie. There’s four here in a contained room just below the surface level. We’re trapped inside but none of us are injured,” one reported.  


“Pulse here. I have two with me, three rooms in from the entrance, but Jax is badly hurt. He’s unconscious and bleeding all over the place. Link is doing the best he can, but we haven’t finished medical rotations and I’m not sure how much we’re helping.”  


“I’m in the hallway. Most of it came down on top of me… I can’t move…”  


“Identify yourselves properly,” Phasma chastened, provoking a stream of letters and numbers from the soldiers below.  


“We need heavy-equipment shifters over here! I’ve got a wall about to come down and we can’t hold it!” one of the troopers still on the surface shouted. Three soldiers were physically bracing a piece of exterior wall, holding it up with brute strength even as the sucking mud shifted beneath them, but the upper section was tipping precariously inward.  


Moving quickly to where they stood, Kylo used his power to push the wall in the other direction. The first few pieces began breaking off the slab, crumbling down the far side. A single trooper dashed away from the area, careful to move out of the way of the falling debris, just in time to avoid being hit with a half-meter of pseudo-stone as it snapped free. The three bracing the wall began to pull back their strength, feeling the material moving away from them. Kylo kept pushing as they stepped away, forcing the wall to collapse out in the other direction. Heavy chunks rained down away from the soldiers, causing the ground to vibrate with each impact.  


“What was that?! Is it coming down on us? Get us out!”  


“Calm down,” Phasma snapped, appearing at Kylo’s side. Her chromium armour was worse for wear, thickly coated in the dust from the explosion and muck to her knees, but she retained her aura of command. Her voice turned respectful as she turned off her broadcast to directly address Kylo. “Lord Ren, this area is unstable. We should pull back until reinforcements arrive.”  


“That explosion was no accident, nor was it a defense mechanism. It was designed to destroy the base in case of capture. The Resistance must have something important down there to risk suicide in order to protect it.”  


“If it was deliberate there may be a second sequence. All the more reason to move away.”  


He considered her argument. It was more the First Order’s style than the Resistance’s to deliberately set self-destruct mechanisms - they were like their Rebel forebears, more likely to cut and run - yet here they were, standing on the rubble of the aftermath of just that. If the enemy had set a second set of charges to finish off their base it was all the more vital to get in there before it could go off and destroy whatever equipment or information they’d tried to keep from the Order. He could not tolerate another failure, especially after the joke the previous mission had turned into.  


Just as Kylo prepared to order Phasma to continue the excavation, a shout came over the comms from his shuttle. His pilot called out, “Lord Ren! They’ve launched some kind of ship from a clearing north of our position!”  


“Get me the _Finalizer_!”  


“Connected!”  


“The Resistance is attempting to escape in a ship north of us. Send out a squadron of TIE Fighters and shoot them down!” Kylo barked, not caring if he was speaking to the comms officer on the Star Destroyer or Hux himself. “They cannot be allowed to escape!”  


The vessel was just visible through the canopy from where he stood, surging up through the blue sky toward the expanse of black beyond. He was too far to tell the type of ship, but it was moving fast, trailing a light plume behind it. They’d captured half a dozen Resistance operatives, but there could be as many again on the ship.  


“Fighters deployed,” came the response from the Star Destroyer.  


He watched the sky, silent and tense, waiting for the First Order ships to appear and bring down the escaping enemy. A muscle in his jaw twitched, clenched teeth just beginning to creak from being pressed together with so much force. Half a dozen bright spots appeared overhead, flashing with the fire of entry burn, before fading to dark specks against the pure blue of the sky. The fighters speared in formation toward the Resistance ship. It was nearly out of sight, just shy of escaping the atmosphere, when it was forced to bank and turn away from laser fire coming from the First Order ships. They converged, hammering at the ship, corralling it down towards the surface again. It was coming closer, returning toward the base in an attempt to shake the TIEs, but they were too fast and too powerful for it to escape them. One of the fighter pilots landed a direct hit on the Resistance ship’s main engine, destroying it instantly. The ship was still headed back toward the base, only now without direction or control. Pieces broke off as it descended, small explosions jettisoning bigger and bigger sections the closer it came. A dense, dark smoke plume marked its progress as it returned to earth.  


“They’re going to crash,” Phasma observed coolly.  


“If they don’t explode,” Kylo agreed. “And if they don’t land directly on our heads.”  


“Well, they’re certainly not going to escape.” The remark was as close to a joke as he’d ever heard from her.  


The Resistance ship was close enough to see clearly now, at least what was left of it. A boxy front section led into a narrow central shaft, formerly connected to the engines. Now it ended in a gaping hole, belching smoke and debris as it rushed toward the ground, barely half the ship it had been at its launch.  


“They won’t survive the impact,” stated Phasma. “They may already be dead.”  


“Send a team to the crash site anyway,” Kylo directed. “I won’t take a chance on them getting away, dead or alive.”  


The ship passed overhead, sunlight glinting on the intact panels before the charred, broken end rushed by. They were still too high to land nearby. The crash site would likely come several kilometers away. The TIE Fighters followed close behind, keeping to their tight formation as they pursued their wounded prey. A few moments after they vanished from sight another group of ships appeared in the sky.  


“Reinforcements inbound to aid in rescue and recovery efforts,” the pilot of one of the incoming troop transports radioed. “Touchdown in three minutes.”  


Kylo turned his back on the broken Resistance base and began the walk back to his shuttle. Phasma trailed at his elbow for a few steps, asking, “Your orders, sir?”  


“Recover the base, Captain, and any survivors of the crash. I want whatever they were hiding down there.”  


“And the rescue efforts?”  


“The priority is the Resistance intelligence,” he stated. The cold dispassion in his voice made it clear how little it mattered as he added, “If your men can be salvaged you may retrieve them as well.”  


He could hear a hint of sullen disapproval in Phasma’s tone as she replied, “Yes, sir.”  


The stormtroopers were utterly disposable. What mattered was gaining access to the Resistance spy network, breaking their communication lines, ferreting out their bases, locating and eliminating their command personnel, crushing them utterly. No matter what face the enemy wore. No matter the connection. This was an opportunity to stab at the heart of the Resistance. Who embodied that heart was irrelevant.


	25. Torture

### Torture

### Kylo

The Resistance agents would not be given the same benefit of the doubt that Norah had received. They were known enemies of the Order. Even if they hadn’t been apprehended at a Resistance site their attempts to attack a stormtrooper would have condemned them, not to mention the explosion they’d rigged that killed an unknown number of the Order’s soldiers. It could even be considered an attempt on Kylo and Phasma’s lives from a certain perspective. The final tally of fatalities hadn’t come through as yet, but once the headcount was finished the operatives would be held accountable for each individual they’d murdered.  


Kylo walked the long corridor of the detention level, reminded of the last time he’d been through. No inordinately pained screams rang out this time. Most of the captured Resistance agents had barely begun processing, still hiding everything about themselves down to their names, but it wouldn’t be long before they started talking. The First Order’s techniques would see to that. Captain Coratis was renowned for her skill at interrogation - the incident with Norah notwithstanding - and she’d completed her disciplinary hearings without charge. Kylo hadn’t agreed with the panel’s decision, but this was one area where Hux’s word overrode his and he’d all but washed his hands of it in order to secure his hold on Norah. Coratis’s brief time in an interrogation chair would hopefully prove to be enough to make her more careful in her work.  


Five prisoners were secured in the cells, their handless comrade still in the medbay receiving rudimentary treatment for his injuries, with an appropriate complement of stormtroopers acting as guards. Coratis came down the corridor in the opposite direction, drawing nearer as he approached. There was an air of insubordination about her, as if she knew she’d gotten away with something against his wishes, but for the time being it wasn’t worth bringing her down to size. There was too much work to be done at the moment. He'd address her attitude some other time.  


“Lord Ren,” she called in greeting, turning on her heel to walk at his side instead of away from him.  


“What news?” he replied, not bothering to return her equivalent of pleasantries.  


“Of the six taken from the surface, we’ve managed to ascertain and confirm the names of two - Marisol Rink and Idre Graeme. Rink appears to be the youngest of the group, and possibly the least experienced. She was the first to give up her name. Graeme is older, and he matches the description of an enemy target spotted but not captured on Mon Calamari. We think he’s an active field agent for the Resistance linked to at least three operations. I don’t expect Rink to have much higher-level clearance, but Graeme seems to be a fairly important player in their ranks. I have my assistants warming him up now.”  


“And the others?”  


“Codenames or refusal to speak. The man you dealt with is still with the trauma team, so we haven’t started on him yet, but the other three are holding up against initial interrogation.”  


“Which one seems the most likely to have been their leader?”  


“Here,” she said, indicating one of the identical doors. “An older man, possibly a former Rebel from his age bracket, who hasn’t given us anything yet.” A cold smile curled over her face, lighting it with anticipation for violence. “I was planning on working him myself.”  


Kylo remembered the man from the brawl on the planet. He had been surprisingly spry for a man on the very far end of middle years, grappling physically with a much younger stormtrooper and almost taking the green soldier down. If he was a former Rebel, and contemporary of the Resistance leadership, he would be favoured with more trust and expectation than the younger operatives. Besides which, the opportunity to snub the interrogator was too appealing to pass up.  


“I’ll deal with him myself,” Kylo stated, relishing the look of disappointment and anger on the older woman’s face.  


“Very well, my lord,” she bit out. “I suppose I can start on one of the others.”  


Turning his back on her, Kylo entered the prisoner’s cell. The old man was strapped to the interrogation chair, the same desperate look on his face that had decorated so many before him, pulling helplessly on his restraints. He stopped at the sight of the dark lord, fear and resignation warring for supremacy on his features. He would break easily.  


“Tell me your name,” Kylo commanded, letting the hard sound of the voice modulator make the words that much more demanding.  


“I’m an innocent man,” the prisoner half-heartedly tried, already sounding as if he was ready to give up the pretense.  


“Your innocence is not in question. You were caught in a Resistance facility, took part in the murder of First Order personnel, and were recaptured during the assault of a stormtrooper. You are guilty,” he pronounced. “Spare yourself the pain and tell me what I need to know.”  


The old man wavered, and part of Kylo hoped he would resist. It would be as good an excuse as any to inflict pain on him. Hanging his head, the old man whispered, “Silas Moon.”  


Looking to the technician in the back of the room, Kylo silently ordered him to perform the usual search for verification. As the tech went to work, Kylo closed in closer on his prey, watching the trepidation grow in his rheumy eyes.  


“Where is the Resistance leadership?”  


“I don’t know,” Moon replied. “We’re not part of them.”  


“Do not play games with me. You are Resistance. This is not in question. If you continue this pretense I will have no choice but to employ more aggressive methods of questioning.”  


“I swear it, we’re-” The protest cut off sharply as Kylo unleashed his power, raking the old man with pain. As soon as he relented, Moon blubbered, “We’re just mineral farmers! We were working on harvesting a tract in the swamp where you took us. We have nothing to do with-”  


Kylo lashed the old man with pain again. This was the best opportunity they’d had in a long time to track down the primary Resistance base and he wasn’t going to waste time with foolish games. He struck, again and again, not waiting for the old man to bother with the usual cover story nonsense. After the fifth wave of pain, Moon cried out, “All right! We’re Resistance!”  


Pulling back his power, Kylo demanded, “And where is your leadership?”  


“We don’t know! We’re not told that for everyone’s protection. We get our orders remotely.”  


His easy capitulation rang false. If he had served among the Rebels he had an easy thirty or more years of experience with interrogation and torture techniques. He’d have been trained to give in with a false story first, plausible enough to delay the enemy for some time while he worked on an escape or rescue, only truly breaking after long applications of deprivation and pain. It was an easy enough thing to check. All Kylo had to do was reach into the old man’s mind and tear his memories open. There was little to no chance he was Force-sensitive, let alone strong enough to rebound it like _she_ had. Still, the persistent fear of a repeat event gnawed at the back of Kylo’s mind.  


Chancing a new line of questioning first, Kylo said, “Your friends don’t seem to share that story. In fact, they said that you have direct knowledge of the location. Give it to me, and I can stop not only your pain but theirs.”  


A barely audible cry rang out from the next cell over, punctuating his offer beautifully. Moon’s wrinkled face collapsed into an expression of deeper despair. It was clear he cared more about the others’ wellbeing than his own.  


“If you continue to defy me,” Kylo added, “I will bring your fellow traitors in here one by one and torture them in front of you.”  


The old man sagged pitifully, breaking under the threat. His voice quavered as he said, “Ileenium. The Ileenium System.”  


“We are well aware of the former presence of the Resistance in that system, but the Ileenium base was abandoned some time ago. I want to know where they are _now_. This is your last chance to tell me yourself.”  


“I swear, that’s the last place I know of! They didn’t tell us they were moving!”  


Tired of the old man’s prevarications, Kylo stabbed into his mind, tearing through his falsehoods and pushing into his memory. Moon knew they’d left the Ileenium System. He wouldn’t be able to hide the truth now.  


“Tell me where they are,” Kylo demanded, using the vocal prompt to direct the man’s thoughts to the truth.  


Moon fought against the intrusion, but each attempt to push Kylo out drew up the thoughts he was trying to hide. All Resistance agents seemed to fail the same way. Their ace pilot, Poe Dameron, had attempted the same thing, and he’d broken, too.  


“Where did they go?”  


“I don’t know,” Moon gasped, face turning red as he pushed against the pain.  


There were images of the base on Ileenium, the open-faced bunker so different from the one on the planet below. He could see the lines of X-Wings, orange suited pilots rushing to fuel their fighters before the First Order could arrive and destroy them, the larger transport vessels quickly filling with equipment and personnel. The old man had been present for the evacuation. He’d taken part in it. Faces rushed past, hiding their fear behind the jubilation of victory. It was irksome to see them happy in the aftermath of the destruction of Starkiller Base. They knew they’d narrowly escaped destruction, simultaneously striking a powerful blow against the First Order, but lost their base of operations in doing so. The Order was coming for them.  


“Where did they go?” Kylo asked again, pushing through the mundane images to find a location. He needed a name.  


Moon gagged, fighting for breath against the stabbing intrusion. A familiar figure strode among the Resistance agents, directing their agitated movements and smoothing out the evacuation. Her hair had much more gray in it than the last time he’d seen her, and her face was harder and more lined, but he would recognize her anywhere.  


_Mother._  


A flare of anger washed over him at his own sentimentality - the worst kind of poison - and he punished the old man for it. Ripping and tearing deeper into his mind, Kylo forced Moon away from the memories of the immediacy of the evacuation, wiping away the image of the Princess-turned-General, driving him back in time to the meetings where the Resistance leaders decided where they would flee to. She was there, too, but it was a handsome man with almond-shaped eyes and white hair at his temples who directed the conversation. Plucking the name ‘Statura’ from Moon’s recollections, Kylo recognized him as one of the highest figures in the Resistance hierarchy.  


_“We can no longer maintain this base. Our enemies know where we are, and as soon as they marshal their forces after the destruction of their base they will come for us,”_ intoned the admiral. _“We are forced to abandon this base and move to a new location at…”_  


The old man’s mind blanked out as he struggled against Kylo’s power. He had a surprising strength of will, but this close to capitulation he stood no chance of keeping his secrets. Pushing again, the dark lord returned to the moment, watching the admiral state their circumstances again.  


_“We are forced to abandon this base and move…”_  


Again, Moon pushed back hard enough to break out of the memory. Fury rushed through Kylo. How dare this pathetic, ancient fool challenge him so? A punishing wave of pain crackled down into the old man’s head, tearing through his mind. He gasped for air, veins bursting in his eyes, writhing under the power of the Dark Side.  


“You will not defy me!” Kylo shouted, inches from the prisoner’s bulging eyes and gaping, fish-like mouth.  


_“…and move to a new location at…one of our other bases.”_  


There was a garbled quality to the memory, a patina of falsehood. Somehow the old man had overlaid a lie onto the recollection, changing the words as Statura voiced them. Quirking his head, Kylo went over it again, hearing the mocked up memory once more. He replayed the moment over and over, growing angrier at each pass. Eventually the false version of the memory began to change, losing cohesion as the old man tried to cling to the artifice under relentless pressure.  


_“We are forced to evacuate this base and move to another of our bases.”_  


The words were blending together, the images changing as the false memory embedded itself in Moon’s synapses. Each repetition seemed to burn it deeper, making the truth harder to sift out. The words changed, condensing into shorter versions of the phrases the old man conjured up.  


“Enough!” Kylo shouted, reaching out with the Force to grip him around the throat and squeeze.  


The old man’s eyes flicked from side to side, seeking aid, his red face growing darker from the sudden lack of air. His hands pulled ineffectively at the restraints, desperately trying to grab for the invisible hand on his neck.  


A meek voice called from the back of the room, the forgotten technician daring to draw attention to himself, saying, “Lord Ren, please, we need him alive.”  


Kylo relented, releasing his grip on Moon while his real hand clutched the handle of his lightsaber. It was almost impossible to keep the handle clipped to his belt, to stop himself from drawing the crackling blade and terminating the recalcitrant prisoner. A deep, powerful desire to cleave the man in half fought his control, pushing him to act, fueled by his own rage at being refused. Moon panted, slumped in his restraints, pulling air like a drowning man. He was too lost in his own needs to pay attention to his captor. A muscle twitched in Kylo’s jaw as he stepped back. It was a cruel denial, but the mousy technician was right. There was more to do.  


“Revive him. Then bring in one of the others.”


End file.
